CON laws have CON-ned Kentuckians long enough

A new report from our friends at the Institute for Justice calls for removing costly and harmful Certificate of Need (CON) laws from Kentucky’s books.

In demonstrating the harmful effects of this nonsensical policy in Kentucky, report authors Jaimie Cavanaugh and Matthew Mitchell highlight a state bureaucracy’s denial of an application by Dipendra Tiwari and his business partner, Kishor Sapkota, to open a modest home health agency to help the sizable Nepali-speaking community in the Louisville area.

Just like good policy improves the lives of Kentuckians, so detrimental policies like CON laws deny opportunities for such betterment.

In analyzing 128 papers containing more than 400 tests on the outcomes of CON laws, the IJ report concludes: “CON laws are bad for patients, bad for payors, bad for improving access to care (including rural care), bad for vulnerable populations, bad for mortality rates for common conditions, and bad for health care innovation.”

The Bluegrass Institute couldn’t agree more.

Read the full report here: https://ij.org/report/striving-for-better-care/