Louisiana Voice

The announcement that Our Lady of the Lake (OLOL) Medical Center in Baton Rouge is planning to pay $50 million for the naming rights to the proposed new LSU basketball arena is getting some pushback, as it should.

One Baton Rouge resident, in a letter to The Baton Rouge Advocate, noted, “It’s fascinating how fast the money comes out when it’s about stadium exposure, yet when patients lose coverage, there’s suddenly a budget crunch.”

But when taken in context, the trend toward nonprofits pouring money into naming rights, the OLOL proposal, it turns out, isn’t a outlier; it’s a flipping trend, as the LOUISIANA ILLUMINATOR informed us back on Aug. 1.

It turns out, however, that the LSU facility isn’t the only proposed expenditure by the Franciscan-run hospital system in Louisiana. Just an hour’s drive to the west, we find that OLOL sister institution, Our Lady of Lourdes Regional Medical Center has committed a cool $15 million (over a 15-year period) for the planned renovation and naming rights to University of Louisiana-Lafayette’s new Ragin’ Cajuns football stadium, complete with loge boxes and club seats (some no doubt designated of medical center board members) that is scheduled to open in a couple of weeks.

And get this: less than two years ago, Our Lady of the Lourdes was ostensibly so strapped that it sent out a notice that it was shutting down its fitness center for older adults.

That decision prompted a letter of protest by New Iberia attorney Donald Akers, a letter that was also signed by 11 other attorneys, educators and doctors.

That same Baton Rouge resident also wrote that “Funding luxury amenities at a college basketball arene while people are being dropped from Medicaid isn’t just tone-deaf – it’s morally bankrupt. And doing so under the banner of a religious institution? That’s the kicker.

His isn’t the only push-back, of course. The nonprofit hospital themselves are RESISTING EFFORTS at oversight, oversight that has shown in a 2022 report that found that most nonprofit hospital systems failed to spend as much on their communities as they received in tax breaks and that fully half of hospitals spend only 1.4 percent of total expenses on CHARITY CARE.

In 2022, for another example, LSU announced that OLOL had committed a whopping $85 million which will “solely and directly support world-class care for all of LSU’s STUDENT-ATHLETESin the decade ahead. At the same time, OLOL did pledge a like amount to support a Student Health Center at the university, bring the total commitment to $170 million.

And while that’s all well and good, it’s still a head-scratcher to try and understand how an institution can claim a nonprofit status and yet have all that money lying around for the benefit of a chosen few.

Well, let’s compare. While we don’t have access to the organizational summary for OLOL, we do know that Our Lady of the Lourdes has 391 beds and that its total revenue for 2023 was $577.7 million against total expenses of $525.1 million for that same year for a “nonprofit” difference of $52.6 million in net income.

OLOL’s 2023 INCOME for its 1,020 beds was $1.68 billion (with a “B”) against expenses of $1.59 billion, for a “nonprofit” difference of a cool $90 million. To the lay person, it’s pretty difficult to see the nonprofit in either institution, especially after one takes a close look at an itemized bill after a hospital stay. Better yet, take a gander at your medical insurance premiums. All that money being spent to promote sporting events has to come from somewhere.

This whole mentality of jumping in to pour millions into sports programs is part of an overall system that is out of whack, to say the least.

Just today (Aug. 17), The Washington Post ran a lengthy story (sorry, I’m unable to link it here because it’s a paywall) noting that the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit with an annual net income of $1.3 billion from the sale of television rights, advertising, tickets, merchandise and membership dues (think Tiger Athletic Foundation). And that’s over and above expenses.

Get this. This year is the first year of a broadcast and marketing rights contract with CBS for an eye-popping $8.375 billion to go with an eight-year contract with ESPN for another $920 million. In 2022, the then-Power Five collegiate athletic conferences generated more than $3.5 billion in combined revenue and the College Football Playoffs pumped in another $1.3 billion.

And it’s all nonprofit. Oh, the IRS has attempted to tax broadcast rights or sponsorships of college bowl games but Congress, in its infinite wisdom and rare show of unity, exempted sponsorships.

So, the show goes on as more and more nonprofit health care systems and hospital groups fall over each other in a mad rush to slap their names on sports venues in California, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Pennsysvania, Tennessee and, of course, Louisiana – even as the nation is staring down the barrel of a health-care crisis.

This isn’t an advocacy for socialized medicine (though some countries have had a successful track record with that), but rather, it’s a question of where is the sense of responsibility to the community as a whole, the marginally-served, as opposed to the privileged few?

Just how is the pasting of the OLOL brand on a basketball arena or Our Lady of the Lourdes on a football stadium going to provide health care to those in need but who cannot afford it, to those who lose their Medicaid coverage, as that reader correctly point out?