Unit 5 2 Responses Needed

Melissa Rosemond

Unit 5 DB

Response #1 from Classmate:

 It is true that both non-for profit and for-profit hospitals provide charitable services. It is my opinion, that non-for-profits provide more charitable healthcare services than for-profits. I believe this is so for 2 reasons the first is that the very essence of a for-profit hospital is to make a profit. Being that charitable services as a definition is to provide services to poor and low-income individuals this would mean that providing too many of these services would in turn not be very profitable for a for-profit hospital.

I am not absolutely sure if these regulations have changed, however, my second reason is that non-for-profit hospitals are required to provide a certain amount of charitable services. For example, a few years ago there was a non-for-profit catholic hospital, that before it was brought as an extension to a for profit hospital, was required to provide a certain percentage of their service to low-income/poor individuals in order to receive special funding from agencies that advocated for more healthcare access for these individuals. Therefore if you take into consideration the cost of care and the amount of individuals who cannot afford to pay, it is more likely from a budgeting perspective that for-profits are going to limit these charitable services as opposed to non-for-profits who have to meet certain requirements in order to maintain funding.