The U.S.’s nonprofit hospitals receive enormous public benefits. They enjoy tax exemptions, access to government programs and federal revenue streams, charitable donations, and the implicit trust of communities that their focus is on healing patients. Unfortunately, many of these institutions appear more interested in political activism than patient care. 

This concern will be front and center at Tuesday’s hearing by the House Ways and Means Committee, where it will examine rising costs in healthcare, its impact on affordability for patients and families, and whether tax-exempt hospitals are living up to their obligations. The question that needs to be at the forefront of this hearing is: if hospitals are receiving numerous nonprofit group privileges, then why are so many systems behaving like radical advocacy organizations?