Mandatory shortages, courtesy of government

GOVERNMENTS create problems. Then they complain about them. “A public health crisis exists,” Kentucky’s government says, citing a report that found “a shortage of ambulance providers.” Local TV stations report on “people waiting hours” for medical transportation. “Six-year-old Kyler Truesdell fell off his motorcycle,” Channel 12 news reported. “The local hospital told (his mother) he should be transported to Cincinnati Children’s to check for internal injuries.”

But there was no ambulance available. Kyler had to wait two hours. Yet Kyler’s cousin, Hannah Howe, runs an ambulance service in Ohio, just a few minutes away. “We would’ve (taken him) for free,” she says in my new video. “But it would’ve been illegal.”

It would be illegal because of something called “certificate of need” laws. Kentucky and three other states require businesses to get such a certificate before they are allowed to run an ambulance service. Certificates go only to businesses that bureaucrats deem “necessary.”

These laws are supposed to prevent “oversupply” of essential services such as, well, ambulances. If there are “too many” ambulance companies, some might cut corners or go out of business. Then patients would suffer, the bureaucrats say.

Of course, Kentucky patients already suffer, waiting.

It raises the question: If there’s demand, then who are politicians to say that a business is unnecessary?

Phillip Truesdell, Hannah’s father, often takes patients to hospitals in Kentucky, “I drop them off (but) I can’t go back and get them!” he told me. “Who gives the big man the right to say, ‘You can’t work here’?!” Government.

Phillip and Hannah applied for a certificate and waited 11 months for a response. Then they learned that their application was being protested by existing ambulance providers.

Of course it was. Businesses don’t like competition.

“We go to court, these three ambulance services showed up,” Howe recounts. “It wasn’t anything to do with us being physically able to do it. (They) just came through like the big dog not trying to let anybody else on the porch.”

Truesdell and Howe were lucky to find the Pacific Legal Foundation, a law firm that fights for Americans’ right to earn a living. Foundation lawyer Anastasia Boden explains:

“Traditionally we allow consumers to decide what’s necessary. Existing operators are never going to say more businesses are necessary.”

One Kentucky ambulance provider who opposed the new applications sent me a statement that says, “Saturating a community with more EMS agencies than it can … support (leads) all agencies to become watered down.”

Boden replies: “That’s just absurd. We now recognize that competition leads to efficient outcomes.”

It’s not just ambulance companies and people waiting for ambulances who are hurt by “certificate of need” laws. Thirty-five states demand that businesses such as medical imaging companies, hospitals and even moving companies get such certificates before they are allowed to open.

When Virginia tried to abolish its “certificate of need” law, local hospitals spent $200,000 on ads claiming competition will force hospitals to close. Somehow, hospitals operate just fine in states without these laws. But the Virginia scare campaign worked. The state still has its law.

In health care, and all fields, it’s better to see what competition can do rather than letting the government and its cronies decide what to allow.