Category: Policy & Legislation

There is an old idiom in American English, “he shut the barn door after the horse has bolted.” The saying refers to someone who initiates preventive measures after it is too late. This is another way of saying an action was too little, too late. This analogy applies to a new initiative of the federal government to root out anticompetitive behavior in the health care industry.

The phrase nonprofit does not mean nonprofit organizations do not earn profits. Any organization that loses money every single year will soon go out of business. At the very least nonprofit organizations must break even. Nonprofit status is a tax election. It means in theory the organization is supposed to plow all profits back into a charitable mission, rather than distribute profits to shareholders (of which there are none in a nonprofit organization). In reality nonprofit hospitals plow most of their profits into expansion.