The Legislature hereby finds and declares that:
- Delivery of quality health care in Mississippi has in recent years become increasingly dependent upon sophisticated equipment and adequate, modern facilities at a time when the acquisition and financing of such equipment and facilities by health-care providers has become increasingly expensive.
- It is necessary that Mississippi hospitals be able to obtain the modern equipment and facilities needed to meet the needs of their medical staffs and to improve the quality of medical care provided to Mississippi citizens.
- The increased costs of acquiring and financing modern equipment and facilities by Mississippi hospitals is necessarily passed to the patients receiving medical care from the hospitals, resulting in higher medical bills and increased health insurance premiums.
- These increased costs discourage Mississippi citizens from obtaining necessary medical care.
- The problems set forth above cannot be remedied solely through the operation of private enterprise or efforts by individual communities, but can be alleviated through the creation of a public body corporate and politic, separate and apart from the State of Mississippi, constituting a governmental instrumentality, to be known as the Mississippi Hospital Equipment and Facilities Authority, to encourage the investment of private capital in Mississippi hospitals through the use of public financing as provided in this act for the purpose of financing hospital equipment and hospital facilities at interest rates lower than those available in the conventional credit markets.
- Alleviating the conditions and problems set forth above by the encouragement of private investment through a governmental body is a public purpose and use for which public money provided by the sale of revenue bonds may be borrowed, expended, advanced, loaned and granted and is hereby so declared to be such public purpose as a matter of express legislative determination. Such activities shall not be conducted for profit.