San Francisco hospitals fail to provide health care in return for tax breaks

Two of San Francisco's nonprofit hospitals received about $74 million in tax breaks, intended as compensation to provide health care for the poor and uninsured, but only provided $5.4 million in charity care, according to a San Francisco Chronicle story about a city health department report.

California Pacific was responsible for the biggest disparity, the report said. It received almost $70 million in tax breaks but spent only $5.2 million on care for the poor and uninsured. Of the total tax breaks, California Pacific got $67 million in state and federal income tax exemptions and $2.8 million in local property tax exemptions.

Chinese Hospital got more than $4 million in tax breaks and spent $265,000 on charity care, according to the report.