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Business, Free Enterprise and Constitutional Issues; Pro-Life and Pro Second Amendment. Susan Lynn is a member of the Tennessee General Assembly. She serves as Chairman of the Consumer and Human Resources subcommittee, a member of the Finance Ways and Means Committee and the Ethics Committee. She holds a BS in economics and a minor in history.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

DOJ and FTC issue joint statement on CON

Agencies Say CON Laws Undercut Consumer Choice, Stifle Innovation andWeaken Markets' Ability to Contain Health Care Costs

WASHINGTON — In a joint statement to the Illinois Task Force on Health Planning Reform, the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) stated the agencies' position regarding certificate-of-need (CON) laws, saying that the laws undercut consumer choice, stifle innovation and weaken markets' ability to contain health care costs. Today's statement reiterates the agencies' ongoing efforts to promote competition in health care.

State CON programs generally prevent firms from entering certain areas of the health care market unless they can demonstrate to state authorities that there is an unmet need for their services...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

In my area Mountain States Health Alliance was able to keep a CON from being issued to a competitor for an emergency facility. Having worked at MSHA I saw the ER overrun with people having to stay on beds in the hallway of the ER since there was not even enough ER rooms.

It seems to me that a health care provider would suffer if they built an unneeded facility in an area that can not sustain it. A CON is worthless. The free market should decide where health care facilities are built.

Chris F. said...

Well, Jason, for that matter, the free market should be the decider on just about everything. But most people almost from the moment they were born are used to having others make decisions for them. They doubt that liberty and the free-market in particular will work. Yet they haven't even bothered to try it.