[iscrewyou]

There are religious organizations that own hospitals. I was flabbergasted when I found out about this recently. My first thought was how they’ve got a perfect system to avoid all taxes.

Edit: it seems like the typical derailment is happening when it comes to religion. The topic is about taxes. I mentioned taxes. Not if religious organizations should own hospitals.

[throw0101c]

> There are religious organizations that own hospitals. I was flabbergasted when I found out about this recently.

Why would you be surprised at this? In (e.g.) Christianity, caring for the poor and sick has been one of the central tenants since its inception, so why wouldn't formal institutions be organized doing so?

Before the welfare state—which is a fairly recent invention—the largest organization would have been the Church (and its various religious orders: Dominicans, Franciscans, etc), which would have worked towards its three-fold mission of worshipping God, evangelizing, and serving the poor:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9m-pNsFPV0

It can reasonably be argued that the very idea of taking care of the poor, etc, only came into Western civilization because of Christianity. As someone who presumably lives with-in Western civilization and adheres to its (general) values, you take the idea for granted, without perhaps examining where it/they came from:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominion_(Holland_book)

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WEIRDest_People_in_the_Wor...

[tialaramex]

> It can reasonably be argued that the very idea of taking care of the poor, etc, only came into Western civilization because of Christianity.

You can try that argument but it's not very convincing. I think you could do equally well arguing that slavery is the fault of Christianity, or warfare or various other things humans have sometimes done and sometimes not done...

The ancient Greeks (so, significantly before Christianity and also influential for "Western civilization") have a whole bunch of goddesses representing the idea of specific kinds of being nice to others. Plutarch is like "Philanthropy is a good idea".

[iscrewyou]

Great points. But you missed the mark. The discussion is about taxes not if religions should own hospitals. The same poor people you mention have to pay taxes while the religious organizations get special cuts. If we are blind to how profitable and mutually beneficial relationships hospitals and insurance companies have, there is nothing else to discuss.

[nullindividual]

What's worse is they enforce their religious worldview at these hospitals, denying legal medical treatments based off of the largest human hoax and political control mechanism ever invented by man.

[rjzzleep]

In Germany some of the best hospitals are Christian (catholic I believe, but may be wrong). The US is a really weird place.

[spaer]

Hospitals were invented by religious organizations. It’s not strictly going to be driven by tax avoidance