Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's hundreds of things that can be done to chip away at them. A pet peeve of mine is certificate of need laws: http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/con-certificate-of-need-... The notion is to reduce capital expenditures and save costs, but they are a big part of why the hospital in the article can get away with charging so much for cat scans -- there's no competition. Of course it is going to be difficult to go t…
Seems like what you're saying is, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. If we allow hospitals to build out as much as they want, they'll be underutilized and will have to raise prices to cover their capital costs; if we restrict them with CON laws, lack of competition will allow them to raise prices anyway. Given that, I don't see how CON laws are either the problem or the solution. The problem seems to be mo…
Whole hospitals is harder to say, but build out will be treated like any other investment, not done willy-nilly, and a hospital going out of business is probably better over the medium term than a hospital being propped up by limiting market entry.
There are good reasons to maintain levels of service geographically, but for stuff like that we should be doing direct grants, not obstructing markets and hoping it works out the way we want.
