Thread by @cremieuxrecueil

What you see here is called "lying"

It's what happens when someone's anti-competitive protections are under attack

CON laws are insane. Basically:

If you want to open a new medical practice somewhere, you have to get your potential competitors to sign off, saying you're needed

If you want to add beds to a hospital, build facilities, purchase diagnostic scanners, but you live somewhere with CON laws, then you have to prove you're not creating competition for other medical facilities in the area, which is often the whole state.

No. Competition. Allowed.

The idea behind these laws is that people will spend excessively on healthcare, so to combat that, we'll have people report if there's more spending needed before approving it.

'A bed built is a bed filled' is the old adage.

But no one considered the obvious bad incentives.

Who does the state ask to determine if an area has a 'need'? Local doctors, practices, and health departments, and sometimes the CON committee just makes up a judgment.

They ask your competitors if they need competition, and if they say no, then you cannot operate in their area.

Places with CON laws have fewer hospital beds, fewer rural hospitals, greater drive times to get medical care, and higher cost medical care.

These laws have led to countless headlines like this, where a town tries to build a hospital and another hospital goes 'nah, fuck you':

Cui bono?

In case it wasn't obvious, it's the people who get to say 'no' when the state asks if an area has medical need.

For example, hospital CEOs got a ~$91k/yr pay bump due to CON laws. In 2026, that's about ~$135k/yr from blocking competition and hurting the populace.

IMO? Ban these laws nationally. They are anti-competitive and they hurt Americans while driving up medical costs and empowering unions to do more evil.

Sources:

mercatus.org/research/data-…

mercatus.org/research/worki…

nytimes.com/2018/09/05/us/…

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21812351/