Non-Profit Hospitals, Tax Exemption and Access for the Uninsured

I want to approach the topic of tax exemption for non-profit hospitals from the perspective of the 46 plus million Americans who have no health insurance and the significant additionalnumber whom we might characterize as underinsured. In essence, persons who are underinsured have some form of health coverage but they remain at serious risk for significant out-of-pocket expenditures when they become sick. From this perspective, the key question is what role, if any, do the non-profit health care sector and, more particularly, non-profit hospitals have to play in addressing the vexing problems posed by the large number of uninsured and underinsured. We tend to think of these problems primarily, although not exclusively, as problems of access