Re "California nurses association plays hardball" (Viewpoints, June 17): Bruce Maiman seems to have let his dislike of the California Nurses Association cloud his understanding of an important bill with broad support, AB 503. Multibillion dollar hospital chains get huge tax breaks by incorporating as not-for-profits, operating to benefit the community. Last year, The Greenlining Institute conducted a study and found that sketchy reporting requirements leave us largely in the dark about the community benefit activities that are supposed to earn that tax break.

We moved to Modesto about 20 years ago to raise our families and soon after began our nursing careers at Memorial, working on the floor then with critically ill patients in the intensive care unit. For most of that time Memorial has been a great place to work. For a large regional medical center, we still felt like a community hospital with neighbors caring for neighbors. Our hospital changed dramatically when we were bought by the large health care chain, Sutter Health. Over the last few years, we have been asked to do more with less.

Assembly Bill 503 pending before the Legislature would amend California nonprofit hospitals’ reporting rules, required due to their exemption from corporate income taxes.The California Nurses Association is a proud co-sponsor of that bill and was surprised by Bruce Maiman’s criticism of our role promoting it, (“ State nurses group plays hardball,” Viewpoints, June 17). The accusation that the nurses association distorted the dialogue could not be further from the truth and is more appropriate for Maiman’s former work as a radio talk show host than the more measured, well-informed opinions readers expect to see on the Op-Ed pages of The Sacramento Bee.

Contra Costa County will direct $6 million to keep cash-strapped Doctors Medical Center afloat for the next few months and give officials time to ponder what to do next. The $6 million property tax transfer approved by the board of supervisors Tuesday represents a third of the San Pablo-based hospital's annual $18 million deficit. The money will allow it to continue to operate while officials scramble to come up with a permanent rescue formula for a downsized facility.

Every year Los Angeles’ Cedars-Sinai Medical Center releases a glossy brochure called Report to the Community. Among the doctor profiles and research-breakthrough stories are several dry metrics dealing with the number of beds, total patient and outpatient days and, perhaps most impressively, the year’s dollar value for something called “community benefit contributions.” Cedars, which is the state’s third highest-earning nonprofit hospital, claimed $640.3 million as its 2012 community benefit contribution.

An activist nurses union is pushing for legislation in Massachusetts that would create greater transparency regarding hospital prices, executive compensation and investment of assets. The Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA), affiliated with the National Nurses United, supports legislation, HB 3844, that would require disclosure of hospital profit margins, executive pay, and how organizations invest assets overseas. The union is also pushing for a voter ballot initiative as a backup to the legislative route.