Rex Hospitals wants to consolidate and make more efficient its cardiovascular services, and the hospital is willing to spend $120 million to do it. Before Rex can begin, however, it must receive the stamp of approval from the state’s Certificate of Need program (CON) since state bureaucrats believe they, not Rex officials, know what’s best for the delivery of health care services.
The CON law has been repealed in many states but North Carolina continues to thwart market forces and impose this antiquated regulation that ends up hurting consumers by limiting access to services. In this brief interview JLF’s Roy Cordato — who has written extensively on the folly of the CON law — explains that CON turns economics on its head and should be repealed.
