This week, the John Locke Foundation sponsored a lecture by one of North Carolina’s top hospital lobbyists, a self-professed fan of the free market, albeit with one big exception. The purpose of his presentation was to rebut a previous speaker, a physician who strongly objects to the state’s Certificate of Need (CON) law. CON is a regulation that limits health care supply unless a specific “need” is determined by state bureaucrats. If medical providers have plans to build or expand an existing health care facility, offer new services, or update major medical equipment, they will most likely have to ask permission from “The SHCC,” the State Health Coordinating Council.
Here is what I learned from the lobbyist:
1. The way to ease the burden of an overregulated environment like health care is to add more regulation in the form of CON.
2. More CON is bad because it disrupts the free market. Less CON is bad because the free market is disruptive.
But now that Obamacare has supposedly added seven million more individuals to public and private health insurance rolls, the supply side of health care cannot be ignored. The political agenda focuses more on reducing the number of uninsured and not enough on prescribing ways that patients can access services in less expensive settings.
Read more from my latest Forbes blog here.
