Health legislation that would require doctors and health practitioners to obtain a ‘certificate of need’ before being allowed to practise in a particular area has been declared unconstitutional by the high court. The requirement has been described as a cornerstone of the proposed National Health Insurance.
Can anyone ELI5 for me what a certificate of need is and why it’s important?
A CON (certificate of need) is essentially a “means test” for private health infrastructure - ie, a dentist who wishes to open up a (private) dentistry practice in a town must first apply for a CON from the authorities and essentially prove that the town requires the services of a dentist (for instance).
As you can probably imagine, there are a lot of health practitioners (both dodgy and non-dodgy) that might feel threatened by such a system. It also doesn’t help that the CON system in the US has been abused by big private hospitals to essentially monopolize private health care systems.
As far as I’m concerned, none of this would be a problem if the ANC regime wasn’t literally defunding our public healthcare right before our eyes while pretending they care about healthcare access for us rabble.