Healthcare industry

CHICAGO - General Motors Corp. today will make a presentation to the Detroit Police and Fire Retirement System to try to persuade the pension board to loan the ailing automaker up to $500 million by investing in GM's prominent downtown Detroit headquarters.

The Oktibbeha County Board of Supervisors on Nov. 4 will ask voters to approve issuing $27.5 million of general obligation bonds. Proceeds would be used to make improvements to the Oktibbeha County Hospital.

SAN FRANCISCO - California officials appear to have received at least a temporary reprieve from the full scope of a federal court motion demanding $8 billion to implement a state prison hospital construction program.

WASHINGTON - Investors who bought $55.5 million of bonds to help construct the Glebe, an upscale continuing-care retirement community near Roanoke, Va., face major uncertainties with their investments after the facility defaulted on a $15 million bond payment in July because its revenues came in lower than anticipated.

Massachusetts’ landmark health care program will receive an additional $21.2 billion of federal reimbursement over the next three years, a $4.3 billion boost in federal funding.

LAS VEGAS - What is clear: the landscape for nonprofit health care financing has changed. What is not so clear: what that landscape will look like after the current credit crisis wanes, according to participants last week at The Bond Buyer's Nonprofit Hospital Finance Conference here.

LAS VEGAS - The ongoing crisis in the markets was evident yesterday in the hallways and at the podium of The Bond Buyer's annual Nonprofit Hospital Finance Conference here.

CHICAGO - ThedaCare Inc. and Marquette University - two Wisconsin-based tax-exempt borrowers that sought first-time ratings - joined the list of issuers with deals on hold this week due to the rise in long-term interest rates, although Marquette did move forward with its floating-rate tranches due to its cash needs.

CHICAGO - Indiana-based Sisters of St. Francis Health Services Inc. hopes to try again soon to get a long-postponed new-money deal sold, possibly by next week.

DALLAS — Baylor Health Care System recently unveiled plans to build a $350 million cancer hospital and cancer outpatient center at its main campus in downtown Dallas.

New Jersey received $7.4 billion of good news this week as an outside actuarial report now pegs the state's unfunded other post-employment benefit liability at $50.65 billion, down from the previous years' shortfall of $58.59 billion.

CHICAGO - After years of near financial collapse, Detroit's largest safety-net hospital is enjoying its fourth straight year of operating profitability and now hopes to enter the bond market for the first time in a decade to generate proceeds that would continue to bolster that performance.

Fitch Ratings assigned a negative watch to the outstanding debt issued through the Indiana Health Facilities Financing Authority on behalf of retirement facility Marquette Manor.

CHICAGO - The Civic Federation of Chicago, a local, business-funded government watchdog group, is launching a new institute with a multi-year grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation aimed at highlighting Illinois' fiscal health and influencing policy decisions.

CHICAGO - Chicago-based Ziegler Capital Markets is seizing on business opportunities arising from the turmoil at Wall Street's investment banks, adding 17 professionals to its tax-exempt staff and pursuing business with larger hospitals that might feel neglected by their Wall Street bankers.

CHICAGO - Despite remaining largely insulated from the turmoil in the capital markets so far, the years-long strong operating performance across the nonprofit health care sector could be headed for a decline in 2009, particularly among smaller, lower-rated credits, Fitch Ratings analysts said in a report on median ratios on the industry released yesterday.

CHICAGO - Wisconsin's largest local governments face a collective $6 billion unfunded liability for retiree health care benefits, with Milwaukee-area governments and school districts representing about $4.5 billion of the total, according to a new study from a local government policy watchdog group.

The Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board last week approved a second proton therapy center to treat cancer in the Chicago area, despite concerns that the region can’t support two centers.

Dallas County Judge Jim Foster is leading the campaign for a $747 million bond issue that would finance the replacement of the existing Parkland Hospital.

Michigan’s nonprofit hospitals spent a record-setting $2.6 billion in community benefits in 2007, according to an annual report out this week from the Michigan Health & Hospital Association.