Nonprofit Hospitals Are Profiting While Our Communities Pay The Price

In an era where equity is the rallying cry, our healthcare system remains one of the most opaque and exploitative sectors in the U.S.—particularly for working-class and underserved communities. As the founder of 1WorldFestGlobal , an organization dedicated to celebrating unity through diversity, I have come to see cultural advocacy as inseparable from economic and healthcare justice.

Behind the walls of many of New York’s so-called nonprofit hospitals, a silent billing crisis is unfolding—one that exploits patients, deepens disparities, and redirects community wealth into vanity projects and institutional branding.

This practice, known as dishonest billing, allows hospitals to buy private physician practices and then charge hospital-level rates for routine care. Add to that “faci