Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) issued a statement highly critical of nonprofit tax-exempt hospitals while releasing answers of 10 major nonprofit hospitals prior to a Senate Finance Committee hearing on September 13. He questioned whether the public was receiving measurable benefits in return for “billions of dollars in tax breaks.”

A partial text of the statement follows:

Non-profit doesn’t necessarily mean pro-poor patient. Non-profit hospitals may provide less care to the poor than their for-profit counterparts. They may charge poor, uninsured patients more for the same services than they charge insured patients. They sometimes give their executives gold-plated compensation packages and generous perks such as country club memberships. All of this calls into question whether non-profit hospitals deserve the billions of dollars in tax breaks they receive from federal, state, and local governments.