According to the Report, the Largest Hospital Systems in North Carolina Made Record Profits While Taking Billions of Dollars in COVID Relief

 American Health Care as We Call It Today, and For All Its High-Tech Miracles, Has Evolved Into One of the Most Atrocious Rackets the World Has Ever Seen, by Racket… I Mean an Enterprise Organized Explicitly to Make Dishonest Money.

According to a study issued Wednesday by the state treasurer’s office, North Carolina’s major hospital systems profited billions of dollars during the pandemic despite receiving $1.5 billion in taxpayer-funded COVID-19 relief payments.

State Treasurer Dale Folwell issued the report, headlined “North Carolina Hospital Systems Profit During COVID,” in which he urged hospital systems to “use their earnings to cut expenses for patients” or “return superfluous, taxpayer-funded relief monies.”

According to the research, Atrium Health, Cone Health, Duke Health, Novant Health, UNC Health, Vidant Health, and WakeMed earned $5.2 billion in net profits in 2021 and increased cash and financial investments by $7.1 billion from 2019 to 2021.

According to the analysis, six of those hospital systems had larger net profits than in the years before the epidemic.

This expansion occurred as the seven hospital systems allegedly accepted $1.5 billion in taxpayer-funded COVID assistance aimed to assist hospitals dealing with the epidemic, as well as additional $1.6 billion in Medicare Accelerated and Advance Payments from 2020-2021.

“These systems boasted enormous reserves, but they still took the majority of the relief funds meant for struggling hospitals—and then failed to devote more than a fraction of their windfall to increasing charity care for their suffering patients,” Folwell said in a press release announcing the report.
‘Enough money on hand’

The analysis, which was performed in partnership with experts from the North Carolina State Health Plan and the National Academy of State Health Policy, examined the audited annual financial statements of the state’s seven major hospital systems as well as Medicare cost data.

It was peer-reviewed by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health academics.

According to the research, Duke Health outperformed the other seven hospital systems with a 41 percent net profit in 2021. Duke Health’s net profit margin in 2019 was 11%.

Meanwhile, Atrium Health allegedly received the greatest taxpayer relief funds—$589 million in COVID assistance and another $438 million in Medicare advance payments.

According to the research, “Atrium Health then achieved a $1.7 billion net profit following its merger with Wake Forest Baptist Health in 2021.”

Despite receiving massive government handouts, the report claims that all seven hospital systems had vastly more resources than rural hospitals and independent physicians, with the majority having “enough cash on hand to operate for more than half a year without any incoming revenue, as well as billions of dollars in cash and financial investments.”

The investigation also discovered that, despite their claimed earnings, hospital systems shared little of them with underprivileged patients, noting that a third of North Carolina hospitals spent less on charity care in 2020, when the epidemic was at its height.

From 2019 to 2020, charity care expenditure grew by just $246.5 million across 104 hospitals, but some hospitals boosted charging of impoverished patients who were eligible for charity treatment.

According to the study, Atrium Health sued hundreds of people. ‘Politically driven’ “While front-line health-care employees suffered, hospital CEOs earned billions on Wall Street,” Folwell said. “None of these charitable organizations pay property, income, or sales taxes.” Even though thousands of North Carolinians lost their companies and employment as a result of the epidemic, many failed to completely respect their benevolent objective.”

Folwell is pressing hospital systems to either refund public funds or commit to lowering hospital prices. The Treasurer also supports the Medical Debt De-Weaponization Act, which attempts to improve medical debt accountability, transparency, and consumer safeguards.

“We have a responsibility to hold hospital administrators responsible for destroying the financial health of thousands of patients and shifting money from citizens to them,” Folwell said.

The North Carolina Healthcare Association, which represents the state’s hospitals, said in a statement Wednesday that Folwell’s analysis is “politically driven” and “falsely demonizes health systems for asking for and utilizing Provider Relief Funds (PRF) to react to the COVID-19 problem.”

“The study conveniently forgets the realities on the ground of what hospitals were confronting, as with prior politically driven assertions by the Treasurer… “Cherry-picking financial data and then spinning it does not reflect the many immense struggles and challenges confronting the hospital field, including workforce shortage criticism, skyrocketing costs for supplies, equipment, drugs, and labor, and near-historic levels of inflation,” according to the NCHA statement. ‘Charged And Misleading’ Report

The investigation also “attacked” Charlotte-based Atrium Health, according to a statement.

“It’s alarming that health systems like Atrium Health are under assault when we’re still caring for populations recovering from the epidemic,” said Atrium, the city’s biggest hospital system. “The fact is that the $719 million in provider relief payments we have received represents less than half of the $1.55 billion financial damage we have sustained as a consequence of the epidemic.”

Duke Health said that it had “a total community investment of $823 million, including $141 million in financial support to approximately 270,000 patients,” and that COVID relief money had assisted it in keeping its 25,000 employees employed throughout the epidemic.

UNC Health described the report as “charged and misleading,” claiming that it “paints a baseless picture of excess relief funds as ‘profit’ and appears to intentionally obscure the fact that advanced Medicare payments were not gifts—UNC Health has already paid the federal government back almost all of the $305 million it received from advance Medicare payments.”

“Our employees at Novant Health have been relentlessly working on the frontlines of this epidemic for more than two years to ensure everyone, regardless of capacity to pay, is receiving the care and attention they need,” “Novant Health opened testing facilities, immunization clinics, and respiratory evaluation clinics using Provider Relief Funds.” Furthermore, the funding assisted in making up for the loss in care volumes experienced during the epidemic.”

According to a WakeMed spokeswoman, “Since 2020, WakeMed has suffered considerable expenses connected to the pandemic… Operational funds were utilized to pay for higher-cost resources such as personal protective equipment and medical supplies, pharmaceuticals, COVID testing, vaccination infrastructure, and increased labor demands—all of which were required to support patient care, safety, and staff requirements during the pandemic.”

“Despite the fact that COVID-19 had an effect on all aspects of hospital operations and income, WakeMed continues to care for our patients, employees, and community like never before.” “For our fiscal year 2021, WakeMed’s direct community benefit was $237 million,” the representative continued.