Subsidizing health care providers through the tax code: status or conduct?
The merits of tax exemption for nonprofit health care providers have been hotly debated for decades. Mark Schlesinger and Brad Gray provide a useful, dispassionate meta-analysis of past research; they conclude that there are real differences in the performance of nonprofit and for-profit hospitals and nursing homes, although they vary along several key dimensions. Unfortunately, their findings offer no insight on whether these differences are large enough to justify a sizable subsidy and whether it makes more sense to use an undifferentiated subsidy tied to status (current practice), or a graduated subsidy tied to quantifiable and objective measures of performance.
Hyman
David A
DA
University of Illinois, Champaign, USA. dhyman@law.uiuc.edu
Sage
William M
WM
D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D006302:Health Services Research; D006777:Hospitals, Proprietary / Q000191:economics*; D006788:Hospitals, Voluntary / Q000191:economics*; D006801:Humans; D010067:Ownership / Q000145:classification; D011050:Policy Making; D019464:Tax Exemption; D014481:United States