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(The Center Square) — How to continue with a imaginable repeal or modification to Georgia’s certificate of need requirement will probably be a hot-button subject for the foreseeable long term.
Leading up to this yr’s consultation, Americans for Prosperity-Georgia introduced a six-figure marketing campaign to inspire lawmakers to rescind the CON requirement. Now, a Georgia Senate committee will discover whether or not the state must amend the CON mandate.
A brand new Georgia Public Policy Foundation report, authored via Matthew Mitchell, a senior analysis fellow on the Knee Center for the Study of Occupational Regulation at West Virginia University, and Chris Denson, director of coverage and analysis for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, discovered laws have ended in reduced availability of well being care products and services and better prices.
“If you restrict supply, that’s a captive market, and it’s allowed costs to continue to rise,” Denson informed The Center Square.
CONs emerged on the state degree within the Seventies following a federal regulation that allowed the government to withhold budget from states that didn’t determine a program. While Congress eradicated the federal incentives for CONs a few decade later, some states, together with Georgia, have now not repealed their CON necessities.
“We’ve had roughly a dozen or so states since then repeal it,” Denson stated. “In Georgia, it’s a state law, so we’re taking state-level legislative action. But probably the biggest reason for it is that we have a situation now where you have very powerful incumbents in the form usually of hospitals and health systems, and it protects them from competition. They obviously have a vested financial interest in preserving the system.”
Georgia officers established the state’s CON program in 1979, regardless that state officers started reviewing well being care tasks in 1975. According to the Georgia Department of Community Health, CON laws “measure and define” the need for a facility, intention to stay prices in take a look at and make sure Georgians have get right of entry to to well being care.
“Hospitals and health systems have shifted the debate toward, we need CON because we have to treat everyone that comes through the door, regardless of their ability to pay,” Denson added. Effectively, the argument is “we need to preserve our elective surgeries, our imaging in order to make financial profits on our areas where we lose money. But CON was never intended to be that way.”
The Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals has voiced its opposition to repealing the CON requirement.
“Hospitals in rural communities are often the first or second largest employer, most often right behind the school system,” Denson stated. “In metro Atlanta, three of the top four largest employers are health systems.
“And so politically, now not only are those group well being care suppliers that experience very tough lobbies and are prepared to spend thousands and thousands to keep their certificate of need, however in addition they have the roles argument to fall again on: we’re using most of these folks,” Denson added. “Obviously, they’re very sturdy politically, and that’s most definitely why you’ve noticed so much of state of no activity on the state degree, now not only in Georgia however in maximum states, given the ones elements.”
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