Hospitals flush with cash got billions in coronavirus bailouts
By Noah Manskar
May 25, 2020 | 9:37am
Hospitals hoarding massive piles of cash got billions of dollars in federal coronavirus bailouts while vulnerable health centers were forced to scrape by, a new report says.
The feds have given more than $5 billion in grants to 20 big hospital chains that already had more than $108 billion in cash, the New York Times reported Monday.
The money was among $72 billion in grants the Department of Health and Human Services has distributed to hospitals and other providers since April under the CARES Act — the $2.2 trillion stimulus bill that Congress passed in March to shore up struggling businesses amid the pandemic, according to the paper.
But some grants went to well-heeled institutions with cash reserves so large they could afford to gamble some of them on Wall Street, the Times reported.
They include Seattle’s Providence Health System and the Cleveland Clinic, which got more than $700 million in combined aid after each reaped more than $1 billion in investment profits last year, the story says. Providence has nearly $12 billion in cash while the Cleveland Clinic had $7 billion last year, according to the Times.
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https://nypost.com/2020/05/25/hospitals-flush-with-cash-got-billions-in-coronavirus-bailouts/
