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Save Our States executive director Trent England recently wrote about healthcare price transparency for The Center Square, calling on Congress to redouble oversight of massive, subsidized healthcare corporations:

American healthcare was a sacred trust for generations past. My physician grandfather would treat any patient, never charging more than they could afford. But today, look behind the curtain at some of our most prominent tax-exempt hospital systems, and you find a giant corporation using our money in absurd and insulting ways.

These institutions claim to be “nonprofit” and present themselves as pillars of the community. They benefit from massive taxpayer subsidies and tax breaks in the name of the public good. Yet, a pattern of behavior at giants like the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital system suggests that these taxpayer-funded benefits really subsidize the lavish lifestyles of executives even as patients suffer.

This is a systemic prioritization of executive enrichment, high-society luxury, and complex financial schemes over the supposed core mission to heal the sick.

The sheer scale of the tax-exempt benefit these hospitals enjoy is staggering. At a recent congressional hearing, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith pointed out to hospital executives, including the CEO of NewYork-Presbyterian, that these institutions consistently deliver charity care that is worth significantly less than the value of their massive tax breaks. Across the country, nonprofit hospitals get about $28 billion in tax breaks annually, yet provide only about $16 billion of charity care.

Read the full op-ed at The Center Square.