BHB/3/13
Sponsored by Chetan Yenigalla of Ravenwood High School
This legislation was filed in the Health category
Presented as part of the YIG Volunteer 2024 conference
| 1 | BE IT ENACTED BY THE TENNESSEE YMCA YOUTH IN GOVERNMENT |
| 2 | Section 1: Unless the context requires an alternative, the terms in this act are defined as follows: |
| 3 | Certificate of Need (CON): A permit to control health care costs by avoiding unnecessary |
| 4 | expansion or duplicative services within an area, designed for the establishment or modification of |
| 5 | a health care institution, facility, or service at a designated location. |
| 6 | |
| 7 | CON Legislators/Policymakers: Profit-maximizing officials who capitalize on Certificate of Need laws |
| 8 | to divert funding from rural healthcare development for personal use. |
| 9 | |
| 10 | Rural Hospital: A hospital located outside of a major urban or suburban area; provided that the |
| 11 | hospital may be located within a metropolitan statistical area. |
| 12 | |
| 13 | Healthcare Investment: Federal or state funding committed to a hospital(s), board of healthcare, |
| 14 | clinician(s), pharmacy/pharmacies, and any facilities with the purpose of establishing public |
| 15 | medical welfare. |
| 16 | |
| 17 | Repeal: To revoke or annul a state policy. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | GOP Party: “Grand Old Party” representing Republican policymakers in the United States bipartisan |
| 20 | congressional system. |
| 21 | |
| 22 | Section 2: As of January 1st, 2024, the following states have fully repealed their Certificate of |
| 23 | Need programs, allowed them to expire, or never enacted them: California, Idaho, Utah, New |
| 24 | Mexico, Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Texas, Pennsylvania, and New |
| 25 | Hampshire. Moreover, Minnesota, Arizona, and Wisconsin have largely modified their CON policies. |
| 26 | The remaining 35 states (70% of the United States) maintain entirely uninhibited CON laws. |
| 27 | |
| 28 | Section 3: Certificate of Need policies define the medical requirement of a district by measuring |
| 29 | the financial revenue/profit of that district, and then positively correlating financial status with |
| 30 | medical requirement. |
| 31 | |
| 32 | Section 4: The presence of a CON program is associated with 30 percent fewer rural hospitals per |
| 33 | 100,000 rural residents. Furthermore, CON exists on an ideological basis of prioritizing profits over |
| 34 | healthcare access, denying 1.5 billion USD in new proposed healthcare investment for Tennessee |
| 35 | since April, 2000. |
| 36 | |
| 37 | Section 5: The Certificate of Need Policy in Tennessee is hereby repealed. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | Section 6: CON policymakers shall redirect the 1.5 billion USD that has been barred from |
| 40 | healthcare investment since April, 2000 to construct twenty-six government-funded hospitals and |
| 41 | fully staff each one for five years. This shall provide a rural hospital for each of the twenty-six |
| 42 | counties in East Tennessee, the most hospital-scarce region in the state. |
| 43 | |
| 44 | Section 7: The expense of maintaining one hospital with a two-hundred patient capacity is 12 |
| 45 | million USD annually. Thus, the cost of twenty-six hospitals sustained for five years shall require |
| 46 | the entirety of the 1.5 billion USD that CON legislators have prohibited from healthcare investment |
| 47 | in the past twenty-four years. |
| 48 | |
| 49 | Section 8: 65% of Tennessee’s GOP voters support a full repeal of CON policies. Therefore, given |
| 50 | that Tennessee is a primarily Republican state with a GOP majority in both the House of |
| 51 | Representatives and the Senate, lawmakers will not have a large concentration of public opposition |
| 52 | to repealing CON laws across the state. |
| 53 | |
| 54 | Section 9: This act will not come at the expense of the Tennessee government. Instead, it will |
| 55 | allocate a majority of healthcare investment away from corporate greed and back towards rural |
| 56 | hospital development using funds that have been redirected. Therefore, the expense of enacting |
| 57 | this policy is 0.00 USD. |
| 58 | |
| 59 | Section 10: All laws and policies in conflict with this action are hereby absolved. |
| 60 | |
| 61 | Section 11: This act shall take effect on October 1, 2024, the beginning of the 2025 fiscal year, |
| 62 | with rural communities and those who need uninhibited healthcare relying on it. |
| 63 |