The American Hospital Association has urged constituents to oppose a proposal by the Senate Finance Committee that would require hospitals to provide “a minimum annual level of charitable care” in order to obtain or keep their tax-exempt status as charitable organizations.

The proposal would prevent tax-exempt hospitals from refusing service to those unable to pay for it, and require them to follow specific procedures before initiating collection activities against patients.

Hospitals found to violate the rule could lose their tax-exempt status or be slapped with excise taxes by the government.

Currently non-profit hospitals pay no federal income tax, and can access government-issued tax-exempt bonds. They can also receive tax-deductible contributions. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation believes these tax breaks are worth more than $6 billion per year.

“Ask your senators to oppose the charity care proposal,” read the bold type in an AHA bulletin released last week.

“A formulaic, one-size-fits-all charity care standard will hamstring hospitals’ efforts to respond to the unique needs of their communities,” it continued.

“It would penalize children’s, teaching and research hospitals and those in rural areas because they provide community benefit in a variety of forms other than just charity care.”

The new standards were floated by Finance Committee chairman, Max Baucus, a Montana Democrat, and Iowa’s Charles Grassley, the senior-ranking Republican on the Committee.

Mr. Grassley reasoned that hospitals received “a tremendous advantage” from their tax-exempt status, but don’t always provide enough charity care to justify it.

Grassley, for the life of him, couldn’t see why the AHA was raising such a ruckus on the matter. “If, as a result of health care reform, everyone has health insurance, presumably hospitals should see a steep decline or the elimination of uncompensated care,” Grassley reasoned to the New York Times.

Six weeks after Sanofi-Aventis coughed up $500 million for a company with 18 employees, the deal already smells like roses.

When Sanofi reeled in San Francisco-based BiPar Sciences, the prize was an investigational drug known as BSI-201, the furthest along of a new breed of cancer fighters known as PARP inhibitors.

That drug—it was revealed at the recently concluded meetings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology—prolonged survival in women with a particularly nasty form of breast cancer by 61%, to 9.2 months, when added to standard chemotherapy.

That result was hailed as “a huge bombshell” by Powel Brown, director of Baylor’s Breast Center. He predicted the FDA would approve the drug within 2 years.

In commenting on Paris-based Sanofi’s shrewd acquisition, Chief Executive Officer Chris Viehbacher told Bloomberg, “the size of teams and the size of their budget do not correlate to research and development success.”

After chemotherapy or radiation damages the DNA of cancer cells, they typically mobilize PARP enzymes to repair the damage. PARP inhibitors block these enzymes, thereby enhancing the efficacy of the initial treatment.

The ASCO study focused on 116 patients with triple-negative breast cancer, an aggressive form of the disease that is usually unresponsive to treatment because it lacks all 3 genetic targets which have become the focus of modern treatments. About 15% of breast cancer cases are triple-negative.

Nearly 60% of the patients randomized to receive BSI-201 experienced tumor shrinkage or at least slowed progression. That was 3 times more than those receiving standard chemotherapy.
 
Sanofi ‘s next step is to begin a larger trial designed to confirm the findings. That could be completed within a year and then, assuming results hold, they’re off to see the wizards at FDA.