Friday, February 15, 2008

More Good News In Florida

By Michael Bond

Categories: Florida

One aspect of making markets function better is free entry and exit of capital. Of course, we may expect that existing firms will work real hard to reduce competition. Naturally, the reason for this is to protect consumers from terrible things like WalMart’s low prices and low cost classes from the University of Phoenix. This is equally true in health care where physicians and doctors want free enterprise but don’t want to tell consumers what their fees are for various procedures. An old barrier of entry trick in health care is “certificate of need” which prevents new building of competing hospitals and other medical facilities. Good news on this in Florida:Gov. Charlie Crist wants to eliminate Certificates of Need (CON) for hospitals, and the Buzz is there's a mention of such a move buried in one of his budget recommendations. "One of the things I'd like to do is relax that process so that we get more health care providers to more Floridians in a more timely fashion," Crist said.