Health care joint ventures between tax-exempt organizations and for-profit entities

Health care exempt organizations have many options regarding their structure and affiliations with for-profit entities. As long as any joint ventures are carefully structured and the nonprofit retains control over the exempt health care activities, the Internal Revenue Service should not question the structure. However, as outlined above, if the for-profit entity effectively gains control over the activities of the venture, the structure is not likely to be upheld by the IRS or the courts, and either the exempt status of the nonprofit will be denied or revoked, or health care income will be subject to the unrelated business income tax. In summary, the health care industry has been severely impacted by many economic forces, including uncertainty in the area of joint ventures between nonprofits and for-profit health care systems. The uncertainty as to whether the joint venture would negatively impact the nonprofit's tax-exempt status undoubtedly caused many nonprofits to form for-profit subsidiaries and otherwise expanded operations in a for-profit marketplace. Fortunately, with the guidance that is currently available in the form of Revenue Ruling 98-15, Redlands, St. David's, and now Revenue Ruling 2004-51, health care institutions can move forward with properly structured joint ventures with greater confidence that the joint venture will not endanger the tax-exempt status of the nonprofit.     

Much Ado About Very Little: Reply to Herron

Mitchell S. Sanders Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556 e-mail: msander1{at}nd.edu While Herron (2004, Political Analysis 12:182–190) iscorrect that sensitivity to changes in underlying scale andhow they affect estimates and inferences is generally important,our assumption in Rothenberg and Sanders (2000, American Journalof Political Science 44:310–319) that W-NOMINATE scalescan be directly compared from one Congress to another to studylegislative shirking is quite defensible because scale variabilityis not a substantial problem. Not only are the assumptions inour original analysis regarding variability very reasonable,because any variability is quite small, but effects on consistencyare marginal and, to the degree that they are relevant, indicatethat our test of the shirking hypothesis is conservative. Furthermore,even generous estimates of variability in W-NOMINATE betweenone immediate Congress and another have little impact on results.In addition, Herron's analysis includes an unaddressed censoringproblem that again, while unlikely to have much substantiverelevance, indicates that Rothenberg and Sanders have workedagainst themselves in trying to find shirking. In conclusion,the issues that Herron highlights are of marginal consequencefor the original analysis and, to the extent they matter, onlybuttress the findings generated and the inferences drawn.     

Popularity Function Forecasts for the 2005 UK General Election

The article provides a set of contingent forecasts for the forthcoming UK general election. The forecasts are based on popularity function derived from monthly time series data covering the period 1997–2004. On most likely assumptions, the forecasts produce a clear Labour victory in the early summer of 2005, with the Liberal Democrats increasing their vote share by roughly four percentage points.     

Reflections Journal in New Collaboration

From the Editor

Reflections Journal in New Collaboration     

Has welfare reform changed teenage behaviors?

Data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth 1979 and 1997 cohorts were used to compare welfare use, fertility, educational attainment, and marriage among teenage women in the years before and immediately following welfare reform. The first objective was to document differences between these cohorts in welfare use and outcomes and behavior correlated with entry into welfare and with future economic and social well‐being. The second objective was to investigate the causal role of welfare reform in behavioral change. Significant differences were found between cohorts in welfare use and in outcomes related to welfare use. Furthermore, difference‐in‐differences estimates suggest that welfare reform has been associated with reduced welfare receipt, reduced fertility, and reduced marriage among young women who, because of a disadvantaged family background, are at high risk of welfare receipt. Finally, in the post‐welfare reform era, teenage mothers are less likely to receive welfare and are more likely to live with at least one parent than in the pre‐reform era. Establishing more definitively that welfare reform is responsible for these changes will require further investigation. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Intermunicipal Cooperation in the Netherlands: The Costs and the Effectiveness of Polycentric Regional Governance

This article examines the effects of the structure of intermunicipal cooperatives (IMCs) on the perceived transaction costs and benefits of IMCs. Hypotheses based on a polycentric theory of regional governance are tested using data from Dutch municipalities. The findings are mixed. In line with polycentric theory, networks characterized by a multiplicity of territorial scales reduce IMC transaction costs. Contrary to polycentric theory, however, if IMCs are organized under a uniform legal regime, lower costs and higher benefits are reported. Structural factors that dominate the debate between polycentrism and monocentrism prove to be of limited importance. On the other hand, the results indicate support for the hypotheses that intermunicipal trust (as a cultural variable) contributes to perceptions of effective and efficient cooperation.