Charity care shrinking at central Ohio’s nonprofit hospitals

Central Ohio’s nonprofit hospitals receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks each year. But the traditional justification for those exemptions is fading rapidly.

For decades, caring for the poor without expectation of payment served as the primary basis for tax breaks provided to hospitals. But Ohio’s Medicaid expansion has shaken that foundation, reducing the charity-care burden by nearly half in just two years, a “Dispatch” analysis found.