The News & Observer reports today the winners and losers in the “battle” for new hospital facilities in Wake County.
The report leaves this reader with a nagging question: “Why is anyone ‘battling’ over this stuff?”
Don’t get me wrong. I understand the source of the conflict: North Carolina’s certificate-of-need legislation. That law allows government bureaucrats to decide whether any new facilities are warranted and ? if ? who should get them.
But the question remains: Is there a need to decide this issue through a political “battle”? The results of this latest conflict expose once again the problems associated with placing decisions about medical facilities in the political arena. It’s a zero-sum game. If someone wins, someone else has to lose.
Imagine if this process affected law firms, gas stations, restaurants, or office-supply stores. (Sorry, Staples, the government says only Office Depot can expand here.) Consumers would face severe limitations in choice. Producers would have fewer opportunities to compete, and they would waste more time lobbying the government than working to improve the price and quality of their products.
Plus, as we noted in a recent blurb from Walter Williams, we would see a lot more conflict: Wendy’s versus Burger King supporters; Home Depot versus Lowe’s partisans; clients of Dewey, Cheatam, & Howe versus those who favor Jones, Smith, & three other dead guys LLC.
Why not allow Wake Med, Rex, and all other players to build what they want and try to make it work? Don’t prop them up when they fail, and don’t stand in their way when they succeed.
