Yes, it’s true that L+M Hospital’s parent corporation closed its books in the red the last two years, especially bogged down by the $14.3 million lost in a strike and union lockout in 2013.

Still, I can’t help but see the glitter of gold when I drive past the hospital down New London’s Montauk Avenue.

This is the nonprofit institution that pays a little army of executives salaries fit for modern day health care kings. More than a dozen executives make more than $200,000 a year. Some make more than double that.

Some people swoon at the big salaries paid to school superintendents in Connecticut. But, really, it’s small change compared to what the health care kings are taking home.

Then there is the king’s gold hoard at L+M, tens of millions of dollars in endowment money, a lot of it stashed away in offshore accounts.

Much of this is the product of donors who gave generously over the years to guarantee a sound and responsible community hospital, a history of philanthropy for L+M that goes back to the accumulation of the city’s great whaling fortunes.

All that money could be in play as the hospital landscape in Connecticut changes, with out-of-state for-profit hospitals looking at acquiring nonprofits here and some big nonprofits looking at expanding.

The General Assembly this year, at the urging of Gov. Dannel Malloy, is looking at this dynamic, especially how hospital executives could profit from mergers and acquisitions of their nonprofit institutions.

A bill that is heading toward passage would require executives of nonprofits to disclose their potential financial gain if their institution is bought or converted to a for-profit company.

It would specifically require these disclosures in advance of the transaction, so that it could be reviewed by state regulators and the attorney general as part of the approval process.

Hearings on the bill generated positive comments from union leaders and Attorney General George Jepsen, who would be in a position to review the material.

Jepsen testified in a public hearing on the bill that the proposal is sensible because it would enable him to more accurately determine if there is a conflict of interest in the transaction.

Another strong voice in favor of the bill came during hearings from freshman state Sen. Ted Kennedy Jr., who seems to be acclimating quickly to life in the General Assembly.

Kennedy noted in strong terms that people in the state have the right to know if executives of nonprofit hospitals stand to make a lot of money from a conversion.

Melodie Peters, a one-time legislator for Waterford who is now president of AFT of Connecticut, which represents 7,000 health care workers in the state at 10 acute care hospitals, including L+M, also testified on behalf of the disclosure bill.

Peters also complained in her testimony about hospital executive pay in general, which she called "astronomically high" and which appears to have "no link whatsoever to patient or hospital outcomes."

Peters reviewed some proposals aimed at limiting high hospital executive pay at nonprofits around the country, including salary-capping ideas in Oregon, Maine, Massachusetts and California.

Some of the proposals that have surfaced in those states, she said, would limit, for instance, hospital CEO pay to the salary of the governor of the state or to 100 times the salary of the lowest paid employee.

Once the General Assembly is finished with the business of requiring more transparency in the conversion of nonprofits, they might look at the issue of nonprofit hospital executive pay in general here in Connecticut, as President Peters suggests.

There’s a lot of gold being mined in those executive suites on Montauk Avenue.

This is the opinion of David Collins

d.collins@theday

Twitter: @DavidCollinsct