Delaware can make health care better- why won’t we?
In Sussex County, one of Delaware’s most rural, and fastest-growing, areas, there are only three hospitals in more than 1,000 square miles. In August 2019, plans to bring an emergency medical center for the Georgetown area were squashed when the Delaware Health Resources Board, Delaware’s Certificate-of-Need (CON) entity, denied Beebe Healthcare’s application to expand.
It was one of the most recent casualties of Delaware’s outdated, harmful CON laws, which require health care providers to prove to the state that there’s a need for new facilities, devices and technologies before they can expand or upgrade.
The result is a health care a market where competition is unfairly limited and select health providers are able to get a stranglehold on competition. It’s the people of Delaware who ultimately suffer, faced with inflated prices and limited options for care.
In 1974, the federal government passed the National Health Planning and Resource Development Act, mandating that states have CON laws for health care in order to receive Medicare and Medicaid funding. Because the laws did not reduce costs or improve access as intended, in 1986 the federal CON laws mandate was repealed. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Department of Justice (DOJ) Anti-Trust Division have pushed for the repeal of CON laws in the remaining 35 states – including Delaware – that maintain them.
In Delaware, CON laws create a barrier to entry into the market, inhibit expansion, and, as we’ve seen recently in Sussex County, fail to provide adequate health care services in some areas.
Delawareans have suffered the consequences of CON laws. At $9,509 per capita, Delaware has the sixth highest state government spending for health care, but also has some of the highest rates in the nation of obesity, cancer, diabetes, low birth weight, infant mortality and death before the age of 75.
Advocates of CON laws argue that they help the health care system by preventing duplication and keep prices down by restricting competition, but this contradicts the basic tenets of supply and demand. Instead, patients are forced to pay a higher price for care in older facilities with outdated equipment.
A report by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University estimates that by removing CON laws, Delaware could see a $270 saving on total health care per capita and $99 savings in physician spending per capita. The same study estimated increased access to services with a 42% increase in total hospitals and 17% increase in the number of ambulatory surgical centers.
In short, residents of the First State would have better access to care, and would pay less for it.
The benefits of repeal don’t stop there. The evidence from the Mercatus report suggests that hospital readmission, post-surgery complications and mortality rates would decrease in the absence of CON laws. Innovation and quality of health care would rise, in a market full of opportunity.
Delaware has had harmful CON laws on the books since 1978. Forty-one years later, and after a pandemic that strained our hospitals, it’s time to reevaluate, and make decisions that serve the health and well-being of every Delawarean.