Matthew Glans

This week is National Hospital Week, which is as good a time as ever to examine certificate of need (CON) laws, one of the biggest obstructions facing new hospitals, hospital expansion, and access to quality health care.

Private property rights are one of the fundamental tenets of our Republic.

Congress has failed to pass a replacement of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and Obamacare’s collapse is inevitable. To protect their citizens, state lawmakers should take the lead in passing free-market health care reforms.

The data show CON laws don’t work, and the reasons are obvious.

Arizona is one of three states — Maine and South Dakota are the others — that will ask voters in November to approve a minimum-wage increase.

South Carolina lawmakers have undertaken reforms to address some of the serious issues with their state’s pension system, but major changes are still needed to prevent future budget problems. In 2012, the state increased employee and employer contribution rates for the South Carolina Retirement System (SCRS), the state’s public pension fund. The increase affected current members as well as new hires. The 2012 reforms also reduced the expected rate of return for pension investments and reduced the minimum cost-of-living benefit increase. In 2000 and 2002, the state created optional defined-contribution plans for existing and new state and local government employees and teachers.

In November 2016, Colorado voters will decide on a new ballot measure, a state constitutional amendment that would create “ColoradoCare,” a new single-payer, government-run health care system in Colorado. Colorado would be the second state — Vermont was the first — to attempt the creation of a single-payer health care system. Single-payer systems face major obstacles that make implementation difficult, if not impossible.

Legislators have long attempted to reduce the negative health impacts of smoking through taxes, bans, and regulations. Some have tried to extend these same policies to electronic cigarettes or “e-cigarettes,” even though they contain no tobacco and are substantially less harmful than traditional cigarettes. This week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) unveiled new regulations placing electronic cigarettes under an avalanche of new rules requiring that they be approved as a new type of tobacco product — effectively treating them like traditional cigarettes.

One of the most ambitious efforts to replicate real-world competition in the Affordable Care Act has proven to be a growing failure. In an attempt to increase competition in the healthcare market and on the new health insurance exchanges, ACA established a program to assist in the creation of new private nonprofit health insurers, known as consumer oriented and operated plans.

Competition has long been proven to improve services, lower prices, and give consumers more choices, but despite the success of the free market, Georgia has decided to restrict competition in its health care industry. Georgia is one of 36 states that limit the ability of health care providers to expand their businesses by mandating an approval process known as a certificate of need. The system gives current suppliers of health care services an unfair advantage and keeps out new entrants into the marketplace.

Alaska Gov. Bill Walker’s (I) efforts to use executive power unilaterally to expand Medicaid in his state deserve a strong response from the State Legislature, not timid deference to the courts— an equal, not superior, branch of government. Alaska’s Medicaid program is in dire need of reform, not expansion. It has grown at an unsustainable rate, increasing by 150 percent over the past decade. State costs have increased by 300 percent since 2000.

Chicago faces a significant and growing public pension problem. Instead of tackling the problem head-on by holding down cost increases, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposes several new or expanded taxes, which he says will slow down the debt growth from the revenue end. Emanuel’s half-billion-dollar property tax hike is getting most of the headlines, but he has also been pushing for taxes on e-cigarettes, ridesharing, and cloud computing.

For decades, lawmakers and regulators in the United States have attempted to reduce smoking rates using taxes, smoking bans, and regulations. Despite these heavy-handed policies, the decline in smoking has leveled off over the past few years. Electronic cigarettes, meanwhile, have quickly become one of the most popular nicotine replacement products, with the total market expected to reach $1.7 billion in 2015.