ADAM ANDRZEJEWSKI 5/10/2023
OpenTheBooks.com auditors investigated America’s healthcare system and found so-called “non-profit” hospitals and their CEOs are getting richer while the American people are getting sicker and poorer.
Topline
The 20 largest non-profit hospitals in the country continued making massive profits while their cumulative net assets soared to $324.3 billion in 2021 from $200.6 billion in 2018. The year 2021 is the latest year available for cross-comparison purposes.
Those hospital systems received congressional Covid bailouts of $23 billion and only two providers partially paid their Covid bailout back.
Meanwhile, hospital executives racked up Wall Street-sized compensation packages which frequently exceeded $10 million per year. For example, the CEO at Ascension Healthcare based in St. Louis, Missouri made $13 million in 2021 – with three-year pay exceeding $22 million.
Furthermore, American life expectancy during this period sharply declined by a staggering 2.5 years from 2019 through 2022. While “comparable country averages” rebounded from a Covid-related drop in 2021, the U.S. continued declining in life expectancy.
Yet, the cost of health care is still astronomically high, as the average family paid $22,463 in health insurance premiums in 2022. That does not include out-of-pocket costs like co-pays and deductibles, which can be thousands more.
This has led to medical debt for about 100 million Americans.