For years, North Carolina policy-makers have wrestled with how to wisely regulate health care: How do we hold down costs? How do we ensure quality care for everyone?
North Carolina’s Certificate of Need law is a vital part of the answer. It puts much-needed guardrails around our health care system. Without CON, North Carolinians would pay more for care, and they might not be able to get some essential medical services.
North Carolina Business Leaders for Health strongly support protecting our current CON law. We believe the law is essential to good health care, which in turn is essential to keeping our state’s economy strong and prosperous.
Any changes in the law – full repeal, partial repeal and even innocent-sounding tweaks in wording – would be harmful. Legislators and policy-makers should take a long, careful look when CON opponents make proposals – and big promises.
Here’s why:
- CON holds down costs. It protects against unwise, unnecessary and duplicative spending on expensive buildings and medical equipment.
- CON makes sure everyone gets the care they need. In states that repeal or weaken CON laws, for-profit groups targeting lucrative services pop up. Demand and usage for those services goes up, and that takes much-needed dollars away from essential but less-profitable services, like obstetrics and emergency care.
- CON protects our safety-net hospitals. These are the hospitals across North Carolina that provide most of the care for uninsured and Medicaid patients. They’re in both rural and urban areas. Weakening CON would rob these hospitals of resources they need to provide all necessary health care for all patients – those who have means and those who don’t.
- CON reduces waste. It ensures that any new medical services are actually needed in the community. It encourages fiscal responsibility.
When CON changes are proposed, legislators and policy-makers should keep in mind this pledge: First, do no harm.
