Profit in Not-for-Profit Corporations: The Example of Health Care
In the course of the recent nursing home investigations, the thesis has repeatedly been advanced that a major source of the abuses uncovered is the provision of care by proprietaries (i.e., for-profit corporations). While in most human services sectors proprietary institutions account for only a small percentage of those providing services (e.g., only 13 percent of hospitals' and an even smaller percentage of schools), about 77 percent of the nursing homes in the United States are proprietary.2 In response to the scandals, a solution more and more frequently proposed is to phase out the proprietaries and require all nursing homes to be run on a "voluntary" (not-for-profit) basis.3 Similarly, when abuses have come to light in other service areas-e.g., in proprietary correspondence schools, for-profit abortion-referral services, and the minority of