STAT May 13, 2022
Hospitals are calling on Congress for more Covid-19 relief even though they had higher profit margins during the pandemic than before it. Congress would be wise to reject these pleas.
To be sure, during the height of the pandemic, hospitals needed support from taxpayers to deal with the cost of treating Covid-19 patients and the loss of revenue from elective procedures as people avoided care. But the government’s response was more than what hospitals needed. Congress should turn off the spigot for them, particularly given the large federal deficits and growing inflationary pressures in the economy that new hospital spending would exacerbate.
During the pre-pandemic period, U.S. hospitals with July-June fiscal years generated about 5% average annual profit margins. From...
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