I was intrigued to come across an essay by John Dilulio, Jr. in a publication I had previously not encountered: American Purpose.
I have been familiar with Dilulio–a political scientist currently at the University of Pennsylvania–since his work on George W. Bush’s “Faith-Based Initiative.” (Thanks to a generous Ford Foundation grant, I helmed a three-year, three state study of that initiative.) In the 1990’s, Dilulio was best known in criminal justice circles for his hostile analysis of young criminals and his condemnation of violent juveniles as ”superpredators,” a position from which he later–and properly–retreated.
The essay in American Purpose addressed a very different issue: the nonprofit status of American organizations, a status that entitles such organizations to various types of tax avoidance. The “nonprofit sector,” he tells us, consists of organizations
that enjoy one or more of four types of tax exemptions, subsidies, or supports: tax-free property owned by the organizations; tax-deductible donations to the organizations; taxpayer-funded grants, contracts, or fees to the organizations; and taxpayer-funded payments to individuals for purchasing goods or services from the organizations.
Intriguing indeed. But, you ask, why do we need any such “nonprofit sector?” What criteria should be used to determine which existing or new organizations receive some, all, or none of those four tax privileges? Who is supposed to benefit from their existence, and by what measures? And, last but not least, how might we mitigate the moral hazard when some of these organizations inevitably use their tax privileges for private gains or to evade public accountability, or behave in ways that are both deceptive and self-dealing?
The essay began with the good news: something like 92 percent of all nonprofits are small, community-based, and serve local needs. Fewer than 3 percent lobby for government grants or contracts.
At the top of the nonprofit pyramid, however, are less publicly beneficial organizations–and those are especially prevalent in health care.
At its very top, the tax-privileged sector is dominated by the ten nonprofit health systems that in 2021 each collected $14.5 billion or more in annual revenues, and by a dozen nonprofit universities that are among the most well-endowed universities in America. Is enough being done to ensure that these tax-privileged titans’ board members, CEOs, presidents, and other leaders are using their respective tax privileges in the public interest while refraining from individual or institutional self-dealing?
Dilulio cites a 2023 article in which Rice University economists Derek Jenkins and Vivian Ho wrote that, “Nonprofit hospitals, which currently comprise approximately 58 percent of U.S. hospitals, have been repeatedly criticized by scholars and policymakers for failing to live up to a poorly articulated standard of ‘charity care’ and benevolence,” and for failing to justify their tens of billions of dollars a year in federal, state, and local tax breaks. He also cited a 2022 report by the Economic Research Institute, which found that, while nonprofit hospital CEOs are paid, on average, $600,000 a year, the ten highest-paid nonprofit health systems executives made $7 million a year or more; the CEO of Kaiser Permanente was paid nearly $18 million in 2018.
Back when I was a practicing lawyer, I saw how this worked. If a corporation being formed could credibly point to some charitable purpose, and could successfully argue for nonprofit status, monetary gains that would otherwise constitute–and be taxed as– profit could be diverted/mischaracterized as “overhead costs.” These “nonprofits” could divert what would otherwise be profit into generous salaries and lots of perks for management. (Does a health organization executive really need a luxury car supplied by the nonprofit entity? What about that corporate jet?)
The essay has much more information, and offers suggestions for legislative interventions. If you are interested in the various ways in which nonprofit status can be–and has been– gamed, it’s well worth the time to click through and read in its entirety.
My own first reaction was that this situation–the culture of “game-playing” that has allowed greed to infect and distort significant elements of a system originally intended to serve the public good–has become widespread. It isn’t limited to health care and a handful of elite universities.
Assuming we emerge from the November election with American democracy still largely intact, we need to address a multitude of structural distortions, and not just those affecting the electoral system. The misuse of nonprofit status is one of them.
Comments