ObamaCare To Punish The Good Samaritan

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

Health Reform: No good deed will go unpunished under ObamaCare. If a charitable hospital treats a homeless person who staggers into the emergency room without insurance, it may be punished with taxes and fines.

 

One of the "unintended" consequences of the misnamed Affordable Care Act was to place charitable tax-exempt hospitals in a medical Catch-22: To maintain their tax-exempt status they're required to treat a minimum number of patients who can't pay, yet ObamaCare requires everyone to have health coverage.

 

Right now, about 60% of the 6,000 or so hospitals in the U.S. are tax-exempt nonprofits, while 25% are government-owned. The rest — fewer than 1,000 — are for-profit. But this may change under provisions of ObamaCare to be enforced by the IRS.

 

A provision in Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code that takes effect under ObamaCare sets new standards of review and installs potential financial penalties if hospitals don't conform to IRS standards of when and how much charitable work can be performed.