Why Nonprofits Matter in American Medicine and What to Do About it

This Health Affairs web exclusive, co-authored by Bradford Gray and Yale's Mark Schlesinger, comprehensively reviews the empirical evidence bearing on criticisms that nonprofits fail to distinguish themselves from their for-profit counterparts and do not reliably provide community benefits commensurate with their tax subsidies. They conclude that the evidence shows these criticisms to be either wrong or incomplete. To address the challenges facing the nonprofit sector in American health care, the authors propose reformulating ownership-related policies to define both the appropriate forms of community benefit and the appropriate mix of ownership in terms of local markets and communities. (Health Affairs Web Exclusive, 25, no. 4 (2006): 287-303)

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