BOSTON, April 24, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The following is being released by the Massachusetts Nurses Association/National Nurses United:

Advocates will provide lists of hospitals with money stored in offshore accounts and will urge legislators to demand transparency in hospital finances by passing The Hospital Profit Transparency & Fairness Act (H3844). This initiative petition will require hospitals to report all investments, including the unreported millions stashed in the Cayman Islands.

Most hospitals in Massachusetts receive half their revenues from tax dollars including Medicare, Medicaid, public employee and retiree health insurance premiums, taxpayer funded grants, loans, subsidies and waivers on local, state and federal taxes.

This month legislators will debate the state budget and decide how many of our tax dollars they will provide hospital administrators. Yet legislators and voters have NO idea how much money hospitals store in offshore accounts or why hospitals don't keep their excess reserves in Massachusetts' banks.

Hospital CEOs in Massachusetts are paid excessive salary packages that bear no relationship to the quality of care or patient outcomes, like readmission rates, where Massachusetts hospitals rank among the worst in the nation. Legislators and the public have the right to know how their tax dollars are being spent, especially as health care costs continue to skyrocket and profitable hospitals cut needed services.

Press is invited to accompany the Fat Cat mascot as he delivers Cayman Island beach towels to legislators. (Great Visuals & Photo Ops)

The Hospital Profit Transparency & Fairness Act (H 3844) will guarantee taxpayers' right to know exactly how their health care dollars are spent by hospital administrators. The transparency act requires that hospitals receiving tax subsidies disclose in a timely and fully transparent manner how large their profit margins are, how much money they hold in offshore accounts and how much compensation they pay their CEOs. When hospitals are closing pediatric, detox and psychiatric units, policymakers have the right to know if tax dollars are being spent to benefit patient safety or hospital CEOs.  To ensure access to needed services by all patients, the act also provides enhanced funding options for hospitals serving poorer populations. For information on both measures, visit: www.PatientSafetyAct.com

Founded in 1903, the Massachusetts Nurses Association/National Nurses United is the largest professional health care organization and the largest union of registered nurses in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  Its 23,000 members advance the nursing profession by fostering high standards of nursing practice, promoting the economic and general welfare of nurses in the workplace, projecting a positive and realistic view of nursing, and by lobbying the Legislature and regulatory agencies on health care issues affecting nurses and the public.  The MNA is also a founding member of National Nurses United, the largest national nurses union in the United States with more than 170,000 members from coast to coast.

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SOURCE Massachusetts Nurses Association/National Nurses United