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In a Dec. 16 letter to the editor, Keziah Knowles writes that Maine’s Certificate of Need (CON) laws “have become an obstacle to efficiency, competition, and access” to health care in our state, and he encourages Maine’s Commission to Evaluate the Scope of Regulatory Review and Oversight of Health Care Transactions to reform those laws.
I think the commission would agree with the author’s basic point, recognizing that Maine’s CON law has not been updated in many years. As part of a consensus recommendation in the commission’s report, it urges the Legislature to “amend the CON law so that the monetary threshold that triggers CON review prior to the establishment of a new health care facility is increased from $3 million to the 2025 adjusted amount based on the United States Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index medical care services index and require that the threshold amount for review be adjusted annually based on the change in that index.”
Doing so should, as the letter author recommends, reduce the cost and effort required to expand and improve health care in Maine, especially in underserved rural areas. Let’s hope the state Legislature turns this common sense recommendation into law.
David Jolly
Penobscot