I’m at the airport. Of course I start reading weekend edition of the @WSJ. Wouldn’t you know it, the dual designated non-profit grifter, NYU Langone, has a full page ad. And you’re still wondering why healthcare is expensive? And you know that means taxpayers are buying WSJ ads for NYU Langone. Taxpayers subsidize its land. Taxpayers subsidize its buildings. Taxpayers subsidize its debt. Taxpayers subsidize its expansion. What did it cost? The Wall Street Journal rate card prices a national full-page color advertisement at more than $300,000 (52 weeks). For one page. This is the same “nonprofit” hospital system that advertised on a Super Bowl commercial. Its hospital enterprise reports nearly $10 billion in property, plant, and equipment. It has more than 6,000 physicians. It operates more than 330 outpatient locations. It buys hospitals. It buys orthopedic groups. It buys physician practices. It buys land. It buys advertising. It buys the commercially insured patients every independent physician needs to survive. Then it calls itself a charity. How many taxpaying neurosurgery practices were destroyed while NYU Langone built this empire? How many physicians were forced to sell? How many became employees of the institution they once competed against? How many independent practices had their referrals siphoned away, their patients captured, and their businesses slowly suffocated by a competitor taxpayers were forced to subsidize? Nobody knows. Nobody counts the bodies. An independent practice dies quietly. First, referrals disappear. Then revenue collapses. Then employees are fired. Then the physician sells. Then the hospital raises the price, adds a facility fee, and hangs its logo over the corpse. The independent physician paid income taxes, property taxes, payroll taxes, commercial rent, malpractice premiums, and the full cost of building a practice. NYU Langone took the tax exemption, accumulated billions in assets, swallowed the competition, and bought an advertisement congratulating itself. Where is the charity? NYU Langone wants the power of a corporation, the market share of a monopoly, the real estate portfolio of a conglomerate, and the tax treatment of a church. No. If you acquire competitors like a corporation, advertise like a corporation, accumulate billions like a corporation, and hunt profitable patients like a corporation, then you can finally do one honest thing like a corporation: No more subsidies. Pay your taxes.

Suppose restaurants became tax exempt. Five years later they held billions in assets. Paid CEOs $33 million. Reported hundreds of millions in annual surplus. Then argued they deserved even larger taxpayer subsidies. Would anyone still call them charities? Why is healthcare different?