State Treasurer Dale Folwell released a report this week that shows some of the state’s nonprofit hospitals are billing poor patients instead of providing charity care, despite receiving more than $1.8 billion in tax breaks.

Folwell and a bipartisan collection of lawmakers unveiled the report by the North Carolina State Health Plan and the National Academy for State Health Policy on Tuesday.

The report found that poor patients in North Carolina are billed at a rate up to almost three times the national average. Some of North Carolina’s nonprofit hospitals billed $149.2 million to poor patients who should have qualified for charity care under the hospitals’ own policies, leading to massive medical debt.

One in five North Carolina families had medical debt in collections in 2020, according to the Urban Institute. Meanwhile, the state’s hospitals were three times more profitable than the national average.

SEANC stands with Folwell’s efforts to rein in the massive profits that they state’s large hospital conglomerates are raking in on the backs of working families. The legislators at the news conference vowed to tackle this issue in the coming short session, and we plan to hold them to that promise.