A Monroe County resident thinks the commissioners should sue the hospital networks and universities to get their nonprofit status removed.

Bruce Eden, of East Stroudsburg, said people are not happy about the reassessments of real estate property.

“People are quite upset about that and because they’re getting hit on the taxes each year,” he said.

Eden thinks that if the hospitals and universities lost their nonprofit status, then the county would be able to get tax money from them instead.

He said the hospital networks in the area are making billions of dollars and the heads of facilities are making millions of dollars in salaries.

“That’s not nonprofit to me,” Eden said.

According to ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative journalism publication, Brian Nester, the president and chief executive officer of Lehigh Valley Health Network, made $2.9 million in 2023.

Similarly, Richard Anderson, the president of St. Luke’s University Health Network, made $3.1 million that same year. Figures were not available for LVHN for 2024.

Eden said he knows other counties have tried to sue to have the nonprofit status removed and haven’t succeeded, but he thinks some counties did have success.

Commissioner Chairman John Christy said he doesn’t know of any county that succeeded against a nonprofit. The successes that did occur were regarding facilities that were listed as for-profit.

Furthermore, Christy said the health networks in the area are giving back to the community.

“Every contract that they write, they write off X amount of dollars, and that is what they consider to be part of their pure and charitable contribution,” Christy said. “Any time they write off anything, they consider that as part of their community service back.”

Christy said that there isn’t any current case law for the county to use in a law suit that would work.

“We challenge the hospitals every which way we can,” he said.

Christy said that for example, the hospital networks have asked for the doctors offices that are off-site to be included in the nonprofit status.

“By case law, we have to give that to them, because it’s feeding the mother ship. Therefore, they get charitable services (nonprofit status) at that location also,” Christy said.

“I was just hoping the county could continue to go after this,” Eden said.

He doesn’t think the health networks are meeting the five categories set out in the Hospital Utilization Process, which is used to determine if an organization is truly a nonprofit.