Nonprofit hospital operator Dignity Health, which runs three care facilities on the Central Coast, is pouring money into the San Francisco 49ers’ new football stadium. [SF Gate]
Dignity Health purchased luxury suites, known as a skybox, at the recently opened Levi’s Stadium. Skyboxes at the new venue cost at least $2.5 million.
Additionally, Dignity Health obtained the status as the 49ers’ exclusive health-industry sponsor, and the stadium dons a feature called the “Dignity Health Plaza.”
Dignity Healthy is a San Francisco-based nonprofit public benefit corporation that operates hospitals in approximately 20 states. On the Central Coast, it owns French Hospital in San Luis Obispo, Arroyo Grande Community Hospital and Marian Regional Medical Center in Santa Maria.
Like Dignity Health, Blue Shield of California, a nonprofit health plan provider, also purchased a skybox at Levi’s Stadium.
“It’s scandalous that two not-for-profit health care companies that are exempt from state taxes waste millions of dollars on luxury skyboxes rather than putting those charitable dollars toward patient care or lower premiums,” said Jamie Court of Consumer Watchdog.
Court’s organization is pushing a November ballot initiative, Proposition 45, that would require California health care companies to get approval from the state insurance commission before raising insurance rates.
