Certificate of Need News
OUR OPINION: Legislation won't benefit patients
2/27/2009
Assembly's two health measures will be bonanza for surgeons, insurance companies
Georgia's Republican legislators held it together on the last day of the session just long enough to push through two measures that they claim will stimulate competition in the state's health care marketplace. State legislative leaders, borrowing from the health care playbook of GOP think tanks, contend that consumers will benefit by encouraging such "reforms."
But the reality is that neither measure is likely to make much of a difference in lowering costs or providing better access to care. One simply changes where a lot of insured patients will undergo surgery; instead of the hospital, they'll be steered to facilities owned by physicians. The other measure amounts to a tax preference for the private insurance market over demonstrably successful, government-subsidized programs like PeachCare for Kids.
The hardest-fought measure this year - pitting two powerful lobbying groups, surgeons and hospitals, against each other - rewrites the state's authority over medical facilities and services.
Read this editorial by Mike King from the April 14, 2008 issue of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
