By Martin Braun, includes “The financial health of Magnolia Regional Health Center, a 200-bed public hospital in northern Mississippi, has gone from fair to serious condition all because of an accounting rule. Magnolia is in danger of breaching the covenant on a $74 million municipal-bond issue because the rule requires the hospital, whose employees are members of Mississippi’s pension fund, to bring onto its books its share of the retirement system’s $16 billion unfunded liability. The $127 million obligation has pushed its debts above a limit set by bondholders and may cause a default as soon as early next year …”