In yesterday’s Daily Journal, I wrote about Certificate of Need laws. The issue moved from the theoretical to the concrete for me as I spent the past week nursing my husband through a pretty painful kidney stone and associated blockage. Every few hours, I administered more opioids. He missed…
Certificate-of-need reforms were left out of the final budget compromise passed by the General Assembly. But backers aren’t giving up on curtailing or ending the regulation that forces medical providers to get permission from the government to make major new investments. Sen. Ralph Hise, R-Mitchell, successfully inserted a phased-in…
Patients deserve better access to both life-saving and life-preserving health-care treatments. Which means physicians, hospitals, and other health care facilities should be able to invest in their communities to address unmet patient demand for critical services such as kidney dialysis units, cost-effective surgery, neonatal intensive care units, nursing homes, and much, much, more.
The battle to preserve the state’s certificate-of-need laws is about to get personal. A newly formed political organization, connected with the North Carolina Hospital Association, seems poised to target elected officials who oppose CON laws, which require a state bureaucracy to approve new free-standing ambulatory…
Sen. Ralph Hise doesn’t take no for an answer. The Mitchell County Republican was close last year but unsuccessful pushing a bill to eliminate the state’s archaic certificate-of-need system, which limits competition in health care through tight restrictions. He vowed to take another…
Robert Graboyes’ 93-year-old mother had a phone and an iPad, and she knew how to use them. Those skills probably saved her life. During a Facetime conversation a few years ago with her grandson, a medical doctor, she complained about a lingering sore. As…
Americans for Prosperity–North Carolina, a conservative grass-roots organization, on Wednesday released a 2017 legislative agenda that puts state spending limits atop the project list. AFP asked the legislature to consider a Taxpayer Protection Act and to push tax reforms allowing North Carolinians…
The push to reform North Carolina’s certificate-of-need laws that limit entry into the state’s health care market will continue in the upcoming session, state senators say. An academic researcher also says it’s possible that President-elect Trump’s administration might seek to dissolve the state regulations. Because the incoming administration wants to…
The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking repeal of six unnecessary certificate-of-need rules to reduce the regulatory burden on medical diagnostic centers and purchase of major medical equipment. Some health care experts welcome the reduced red tape, but say the changes don’t go far enough. The proposal, which…
Even with the best of intentions, politicians should neither make our decisions for us nor remove us from responsibility for them. Politicians are not our parents.
