Rick Cohen updates earlier stories from the Cohen Report, including Cry Me Five Rivers, Touring the Countrywide, Transparency After the Fact, Extravagant Credit Card Thinking, and Courageous Whistleblowers.
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In early February, the U.S. Senate accepted a revised economic stimulus package, reconciling conflicting House and Senate legislation and overcoming Republican opposition to provisions that would have aided senior citizens and disabled veterans.
Like Captain Renault’s encounter with gambling at Rick’s American Café, “I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here,” a flabbergasted U.S. Congress has revealed to the American public that nonprofit universities and hospitals sit on tax exempt endowments amounting to billions of dollars. Not a heck of a lot actually gets spent, in percentage terms less than private foundations that are, by law required to spend—in what the law refers to as “qualified distributions” known in common parlance as private foundation “payout”—while universities in particular continually hammer alumni and the public for donations.
What does it mean for a nonprofit hospital’s charitable purpose if it keeps an “A list” of preferred customers who receive better treatment than all others? The context, of course is one in which ordinary people must struggle to maintain adequate health care coverage.
