Opinion: Hospitals need to earn their tax-exempt status
Many U.S. hospitals have been given tax-exempt status in return for benefits to their local communities. Some of them aren't living up to the bargain.
The first time I ever left my home country of Pakistan was during my final year of medical school when I went to work for a month at the Cleveland Clinic. The first time I saw the hospital, I felt like I had stumbled into one of the wonders of the world, its buildings like shimmering pyramids and its infinity pool nearly spanning my field of view. Yet one of my most lasting memories from that month is of making my first grocery run. As soon as I stepped off the hospital’s grounds, I entered a different world filled with decrepit houses and broken roads — a world not too different from the low-income country I had just left.
