Lawmakers can reduce health costs
If Medicaid expansion forces taxpayers to pick up the tab for a service that was either previously paid for some other way or not consumed in the first place, there is no reduction in the cost of care.
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Tag:certificate of need
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How to expand insurance coverage without expanding Medicaid
The state treasurer and the N.C. Healthcare Association can’t reach consensus over how to pay for health insurance for state employees. The governor and some legislative leaders are advocating Medicaid expansion to cover an additional 600,000 people, which would cost the state roughly $600 million the first two years. The…
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Pfeiffer’s new health sciences center could alleviate rural care shortage
ALBEMARLE — An eager crowd of bundled-up observers assembled early Jan. 17 in a vacant lot, huddling with government officials as steam from their coffee cups curled into the air. They attended a groundbreaking ceremony at Pfeiffer University for a $16 million Center for Health…
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Forsyth County surgeon challenges constitutionality of CON laws
Dr. Gajendra Singh wants to help patients get an MRI scan for a fraction of the price hospitals and big health care networks charge. But state regulators and powerful lobbying allies restrain him. On Monday, July 30, Singh joined with the Institute for Justice to…
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N.C. Certificate of Need laws continue causing pain
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…
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Clock running out on certificate-of-need reform for 2017 NCGA session
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…
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Repeal Certificate of Need so patients have better access to health care
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.
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Hospitals ready to use political clout to preserve certificate of need
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…
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Certificate of need may be on the chopping block, again
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…
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N.C. ranked 43rd in national survey of patient health care access
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…