With the new year and the new legislative session came a slew of bills designed to either sunsent or seriously scale back the destructive restriction in health care provision known as the Certificate of Public Need (COPN) regime. Moreover, the initial handling of the bills is a good sign that the General Assembly (or at least the House of Delegates) will make an effort to deal with this rent-seeking health-care rationing.
As I’ve mentioned repeatedly (with an assist from Norm Leahy), the COPN scheme has limited health care supply in the Commonwealth, leading to higher prices, higher insurance rates, and less health care availability for all. It appears that several Republican Delegates get that.
As it turns out, there are over a half-dozen bills aiming too scale back COPN restrictions. Any would be an improvement over the stultified status quo, and all of them have ended up in the Health, Welfare, and Instutions Committee’s Subcommittee #3.
The Subcommittee #3 roster is promising: two of the five members (John O’Bannon III and Richard Bell, the subcommittee chairman) are sponsors or co-sponsors of many of the bills; most of which would pull back COPN requirements for specific health care services. Granted, a general sunset would be a better move, but the more pieces can be enacted, the better. A third member of the subcommittee is Bobby Orrock: my former delegate (I have since moved to Suffolk), Chairman of the overall committee, and a previous critic of COPN (Free Lance-Star). The remaining members are Scott Garrett and Democrat Matthew James.
Given this, the bills are likely to move to the full committee, where two more co-sponsors serve (AG candidate Robert Bell and Christopher Peace, who spoke to BD on this subject earlier). This could be the best chance for serious COPN reform in many, many years.
Stay tuned…
