(The Center Square) — For any individual having a look to apply in her footsteps, Katie Chubb has a easy piece of recommendation: Consider South Carolina.
With the assist of the Pacific Legal Foundation, Chubb has been preventing the state’s Certificate of Need mandate on behalf of her industry, the Augusta Birthing Center. In a state the place officers robotically tout their improve of industry — and small industry — Chubb has encountered the CON mandate, which requires the state to approve her facility.
Critics like Chubb say it stifles small and unbiased businesses, whilst proponents say it is important to give protection to sufferers. A Georgia Senate committee is exploring whether or not the state will have to amend its CON requirement, which might apply the motion lawmakers in neighboring South Carolina and Florida have taken.
“I would say I feel like we’re pro-large business; are we really pro-small business?” Chubb advised The Center Square in an interview following Americans for Prosperity-GA’s inaugural Pathway to Prosperity Summit. “I think the small businesses, the family-run businesses, often get left behind and that with certificate of need, we see that the larger businesses that can spend years fighting this regulation prosper.
“The smaller businesses get left in the back of, and that’s the reason the place Pacific Legal Foundation has stepped as much as assist us as a smaller family-run industry,” Chubb added. “We didn’t have the sources to struggle this, and that’s the reason the place they are in reality serving to us out.”
A spokesman for Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, did not respond to a request for comment. Lt. Governor Burt Jones, a Republican, has publicly expressed his support for CON reform.
“My biggest concern is, and it sort of performs out once a year within the legislature, that we have got other teams … that can come and say, ‘This is excellent for rural Georgia,'” state Sen. Freddie Powell-Sims, D-Dawson, said during a recent CON hearing. “…Sometimes, the law is written to house rural Georgia. But maximum occasions, it does not play out that method. We in reality get the quick finish of the stick.
“…As we move forward with our conversations around the CON, we want to hear the truth; we want to hear how are you going to all write legislation that will positively impact rural Georgia,” Powell-Sims added. “We know that there’s … no magic wand here, but we really want to hear the truth about it.”
According to Georgians For a Healthy Future, 9 rural Georgia hospitals have closed since 2010.
“There’s never a single reason that a rural hospital closes, but it can’t be that CON is the saving grace here,” Jaimie Cavanaugh, an legal professional with the Institute for Justice, mentioned right through a June CON listening to. “The available evidence shows it’s probably the opposite. And using CON laws to suppress the supply of healthcare just decreases access to care and makes it possible that Georgia is going to start losing patients to more competitive states now that Georgia’s neighboring states, South Carolina and Florida, have done such significant reforms.”
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