Removing state-based obstacles to affordable healthcare | TheHill

The negative effect of Certificate of Need laws on competition and the monopoly-like privileges they bestow have attracted the attention of the Justice Department and the FTC. These agencies strongly condemned certificate-of-need laws as recently as 2008, arguing that they ruin the market process while delivering the opposite of the benefits they were intended to promote. 

Above all else, the preponderance of evidence is that certificate-of-need laws do not fulfill any of their intended purposes. According to studies from the Mercatus center at George Mason University, they decrease the availability of medical resources, do not make care more accessible for underserved communities, and increase the costs of care by 13.6 percent per-capita in the states where they exist. If there is any substantial benefit associated with these regulations, such a benefit has yet to present itself. The negatives, on the other hand, are unmistakable.

via Removing state-based obstacles to affordable healthcare | TheHill.