Save hospitals. Save access to healthcare. Save lives.
Nonprofit hospitals provide access to comprehensive care for all Georgians, regardless of their ability to pay.
In addition to treating the uninsured and underinsured, hospitals provide many essential treatments where the providers earn no profits.
Our healthcare system has worked for 40 years to ensure access to high-quality healthcare, improve health outcomes and lower costs.
That system – called Certificate of Need (CON) – recognizes that there's no "free market" in healthcare. Hospitals providing money-losing services can't "compete" against providers who only serve the highest-paying customers and only perform profitable procedures.
Today, there's a move afoot in the Georgia General Assembly to remove these important protections.
Repealing the CON laws would allow profiteers to open lucrative surgery and imaging centers – siphoning off revenue streams that are the lifeblood of local hospitals. The end result is to enrich a select few at the expense of the many.
When hospitals close, all Georgians lose.
Even patients with excellent insurance depend on procedures that wouldn't be offered if profit was the only motive.
Hospitals train the physician workforce that our state relies on.
Hospitals provide services that standalone surgery centers never will: trauma centers, burn centers, high-risk neo-natal centers, 24/7 emergency departments and critical care programs.
Without hospitals, our families have to travel ever farther for high-quality care, and regions without hospital can't attract good jobs.
Georgia's hospital community recognizes that all regulations need regular review and updates to keep up with technology and progress. But any and all reforms should improve access and quality of care, not destroy it.
