The John Locke Foundation has written extensively over several years on the impediment NC’s Certificate of Need laws are for the expansion of health care services. We believe that repealing NC’s CON laws will restore health care freedom. National studies show that CON laws increase cost and reduce access but yet NC hangs on to its antiquated system of stifling competition in the health care system.
So what do these CON laws, requiring health care providers get permission before they can open, expand their practice or purchase certain devices or new technologies, actually impact?
If you or a family member have sought any of these health care services, you have been impacted by NC’s CON laws:
Acute hospital beds
Ambulatory Surgical Centers (ASC)
Assisted Living/Residential Care Facilities
Burn Care
Cardiac Catherization
Gamma Knives
Home Health
Hospice
Intermediate Care Facilities for Individuals with Intellectual Disability (ICF/IDs)
Linear Accelerator Radiology
Lithotripsy
Long Term Acute Care (LTAC)
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanners
Mobile Medical Imaging
Neonatal Intensive Care
Nursing Home Beds/Long-Term Care Beds
Ocular surgery
Open Heart Surgery
Organ Transplants
Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanners
Psychiatric Services
Radiation Therapy
Rehabilitation
Renal Failure/Dialysis
Subacute Services
Substance/Drug Abuse
Vascular Access
Forward thinking legislative leaders have recognized the impediment CON laws impose on patients and their doctors and have proposed a repeal of NC’s Certificate of Need laws. For anyone interested in ensuring access to care, lowering costs, preserving the doctor patient relationship, putting doctors and patients before government control, and relieving anxiety when people are most vulnerable, this should come as very good news.
