The venerable motto of the Boy Scouts of America is "be prepared." It’s a mantra that should be – and typically is – embraced by healthcare professionals, particularly supply chain management.

But another practical maxim should be wielded – and very well may be forced upon the healthcare industry by a government that should reciprocate – is "be accountable." It applies to data, decisions and actions. Of course, this will require considerable process improvement but more importantly serious behavior modification.

Previously, we focused on the misdirected aims of the Senate Finance Committee’s Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights in its nearly decade-long educational 101 fishing expedition of group purchasing organizations. Fundamentally, those aims can be classified metaphorically as throwaway summer TV reruns when they should be jaw-dropping programs for fall TV sweeps.

But the illustrious senators are sniffing around another area for that gotcha moment that only a media-craving re-election campaign can salivate over. While it’s an area that impacts a small percentage of hospitals as well as a few GPOs with a particular business model, it nonetheless should ignite a blazing red flare as to how desperate these politicos are to stick it to the GPOs and healthcare providers. The latest "Hail Mary" pass strategy involves somehow taxing dividend or rebate checks as income.

Why? Most of these hospitals may treat Medicare patients so they receive government funding. And by golly, CMS wants its cut of the proverbial pie – at least a much-larger slice.

Fans of this income source favor the year-end fiscal boost – or relief – it provides; foes decry it as exerting undue influence over contracting and product selection, the nugget of a long-simmering argument that GPOs allegedly control with anticompetitive motivations the delivery of healthcare in much the same way that insurance companies allegedly control with similar motivations the reimbursement of healthcare delivery. As comedian Drew Carey once said on his eponymous television show back in the 1990s, "The great circle of crap is complete."

But the feds fret that hospitals aren’t reporting this dividend/rebate income to the government as, well, income. It’s tax-free money for hospitals getting tax breaks for providing charity care and/or receiving taxpayer-funded reimbursement for services. By golly, this shouldn’t be happening in America, particularly during healthscare reform! What do you think we’re operating here, a capitalistic free-enterprise market?

GPOs make for a convenient target here. While those GPOs may, and most likely do as a gesture of corporate fiscal responsibility, instruct their shareholders or rebate check qualifiers how, where and why to report that income, GPOs are not the healthcare facility’s accounting keeper. It’s the providers’ responsibility, so the feds should recalibrate their rallying cries.

Of course, the enterprising GPOs simply can change their business models, make like their governmental accusers and call the checks something else or deliver the benefits in a different way.

However, there’s another wrinkle that may inspire rekindling the memory and vision of the late Sen. William Roth and his tax-reform-minded Roth IRA. These dividend and/or rebate checks really are the healthcare facilities’ own money to begin with. They’ve either invested up front in a GPO’s business model or they’re rewarded on the back end for fulfilling their contract commitments. Curmudgeons and cynics would clamor that the latter means hospitals are just overpaying for products so larger discounts on the front end seems a logical solution.

This should be familiar to the Internal Revenue Service. Taxpayers who receive government refunds are paying too much to the IRS, effectively loaning the feds money that is interest-free. So CMS, with its Congressional sidekicks, hopes to correct something that not even the sibling agency IRS can solve with the citizenry. Oh, the irony. And this is the same government that wants the healthcare industry to adopt efficiency-minded information technology that talks to one another to cut expenses.

Obviously, the 2016 Olympic bid fervor simply clouded the federal bureaucrats’ rational ability to spot analogies within their own Rube Goldberg-inspired government machine.

With all due respect, ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for a tune-up. More next month on what they could do after leaving the shop.