COPN reform passes House Committee, Rent-Seekers’ Panic Ensues

While we were all focused on New Hampshire, Virginia’s House Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee passed the three main bills to reform the Certificate of Public Need regime. The full House could take up all three today.

Of course, the current beneficiaries of the status quo are going all out to protect their privileged position – to the point of insisting hospitals could close if they’re not guaranteed oligopoly profits.

For those new to the conversation, COPNs have led to serious reductions in health care supply , meaning higher prices, higher insurance rates, and less health care availability for all (I should note that Norm Leahy caught this issue first). Three Delegates (John O’Bannon III, Chris Peace, and Kathy Byron) have all presented bills to scale back the restrictions. The bills from the first two passed the committee on near-party line votes (Chris Stolle voted no), while Byron’s bill had near-unanimous support.

The rent-seekers (econ-speak for the firms that benefit from government regulation, and thus invest in ensuring said regulations remain exactly in place), essentially borrow the economic illiteracy we usually see from Democrats: health care is different, health care providers are somehow immune from the profit motive, hospitals are bound to cover the impoverished, etc. To be fair, that last one is actually federal law, but as the editors of the Richmond Times-Dispatch noted in their excellent op-ed on the matter last week…

Fortunately, several legislators have introduced measures that would either roll back parts of the COPN system or repeal it entirely. The bills are due to be taken up in committee today. They have been written precisely to meet the objections of the hospital lobby. For example: A measure deregulating medical imaging, by Del. Chris Peace, would apply the same charity-care requirements that hospitals must meet. Del. John O’Bannon’s measure would retain COPN regulation in those areas, largely rural, where hospitals face the highest fiscal stress.

In short, the sponsors of the bills have taken away the few cards that defenders of the status quo have left to play. The sooner their measures are signed into law, the better off Virginia consumers will be.

Indeed, and the first step is House passage.

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