Antitrust Treatment of Nonprofits: Should Hospitals Receive Special Care?

Cory Capps, Dennis Carlton and Guy David

No 23131, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Nonprofit hospitals receive favorable tax treatment in exchange for providing socially beneficial activities. Extending this rationale would suggest that, insofar as suppression of competition would allow nonprofits to cross-subsidize care for needy populations, nonprofit hospital mergers should be evaluated differently than mergers of for-profit hospitals. However, this rationale rests upon the premise that nonprofit hospitals with greater market power provide more care to the needy. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model showing that the welfare implications of an antitrust policy that favors nonprofit hospitals depends on the link between market power and charity care provision. To test the link, we use three measures of charity care—two dollar-denominated and one based on service volume—to study charity care provision by for-profit and non-profit hospitals under different competition conditions. Using detailed California data from 2001 to 2011, we find no evidence that nonprofit hospitals are more likely than for-profit hospitals to provide more charity care, or to offer more unprofitable services, when competition falls. Overall, while some courts have given deference to defendants’ nonprofit status, our study finds no empirical evidence that such hospitals provide greater charity care as they have greater market power.

JEL-codes: I11 L22 L31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-hea
Note: EH IO
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published as Cory S. Capps & Dennis W. Carlton & Guy David, 2020. "ANTITRUST TREATMENT OF NONPROFITS: SHOULD HOSPITALS RECEIVE SPECIAL CARE?," Economic Inquiry, vol 58(3), pages 1183-1199.

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Related works:
Journal Article: ANTITRUST TREATMENT OF NONPROFITS: SHOULD HOSPITALS RECEIVE SPECIAL CARE? (2020)
Working Paper: Antitrust Treatment of Nonprofits: Should Hospitals Receive Special Care? (2010)
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