Category: Health Care
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Virginia Should Regulate Healthcare Monopolies as Public Utilities
by James C. Sherlock I am a capitalist, but we haven’t had capitalism in the healthcare market in Virginia since the Certificate of Public Need (COPN) made its way into the Code of Virginia in 1968. If we repealed COPN today, we’d still be left with the monopolies it has created and protected. All that…
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How to Befuddle an Old Lady
My 92-year-old mother takes this COVID business very seriously, as one would expect from someone in a high-risk group. She’s double vaxxed and boosted. And she is assiduous about testing herself and others who enter her house. At the same time, she’s frugal, and a testing two-pack costs about $25 at the drug store. So,…
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COPN’s Regional Monopolies Helped Boost Virginia Hospitals’ Operating Margins to more than 3x National Median in 2020
by James C. Sherlock Virginians have been assured forever by the hospital lobby that the non-profit regional monopolies established and protected by COPN nearly everywhere but Richmond: are benign public servants with a charitable mission; certainly don’t drive up costs; that competition does not matter; that the State Medical Facilities Plan on which COPN is…
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Unvaccinated Patients Denied Organ Transplants Everywhere
by Kerry Dougherty It’s right there on the bottom left of my Virginia driver’s license. A little heart and the words “organ donor.” I ticked that box years ago. I also joined the bone marrow donor list when a friend had leukemia and needed a match. Donating our organs is the last act of kindness…
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A Lesson for Virginia Democrats in California’s Failed Universal Healthcare Bill
by James C. Sherlock California is one of the five bluest states in the Union. Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature and a sometimes-masked Democratic governor. It can’t pass single-payer healthcare. It has not even been able to get a bill to the floor of the Assembly (lower house). It failed…
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HB 646 on Nursing Home Staffing Misses the Mark – So Does Its Fiscal Impact Statement
by James C. Sherlock There is a bill, HB 646, Nursing homes; standards of care and staff requirements, regulations in the General Assembly. I support its intent. As written it specifies minimum hours of direct care services for each resident per 24-hour period. In actuality, numbers of personnel required to provide the services depend upon the…
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COVID, Risk, and Organ Transplants
This is the second of three posts about COVID and kidney transplants. James A. Bacon In January Stafford County resident Shamgar Connors, who has undergone kidney dialysis for nearly three years, engaged in an annual consultation with the University of Virginia Health system’s organ transplant team. His conversation with Dr. Karen Warburton went like this:…
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No Vaccination? No Transplant.
by James A. Bacon You would never know it from meeting him over Zoom that Shamgar Connors is living under a veritable death sentence. He requires kidney dialysis 12 hours per day. His doctors tell him that the average life expectancy for his particular kidney disease is about five years…. and he started dialysis a…
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Child Masking – Where is the Offramp?
by James C. Sherlock I have two important questions for my friends who insist on mandates for masks for children in schools. Is the child mask mandate permanent? If not, where is the offramp? I will cede for purposes of this inquiry that you are sincere in your concern for the vulnerability to COVID of…
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The Battle of the Eye Doctors
by Dick Hall-Sizemore One of the constants over the many years that I have been around or following the Virginia General Assembly has been the fight between optometrists and ophthalmologists. The legislative battles between these two groups provide a good lesson in two aspects of the legislative process: the politics of regulation of professions and…
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The Road to Hell in Virginia Telemedicine
by James C. Sherlock The road to hell really is paved with good intentions. The current Virginia State Telehealth Plan was published just less than a year ago. The purpose of the Plan is to promote an integrated approach to the introduction and use of telehealth services in the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 2020, the…
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Rolling Back Regulations Easier Said Than Done
by James A. Bacon Virginia has lagged the nation in economic growth and job creation for a decade or more, and Governor Glenn Youngkin has made it a priority, as every governor does, to boost economic development. One of his strategies for rebooting the economy is to prune needless regulation. “The growing regulatory burden on…
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Unvaccinated Being Slammed by Omicron
by Steve Haner In just four weeks ending January 8, more than 12% of unvaccinated Virginians have been diagnosed with COVID-19. In the most recent week reported, the unvaccinated were almost 60 times more likely to come down with the disease than those current on their shots. This is new. This Omicron version is clearly…
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Littel Pick as Health Secretary Signals Youngkin’s Approach to Healthcare Reform
by James A. Bacon Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin has appointed a new Secretary of Health & Human Resources to lead the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic and also to pursue long-term reforms in mental health and healthcare. Youngkin’s pick, John Littel, is a Virginia Beach resident and recent president of Magellan of Virginia and chief external…
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Chronic Complainers Notch Big Win Against Landlords
by James A. Bacon Whether you agree or disagree with Attorney General Mark Herring’s position on the case, a dispute between an unnamed individual with mental health issues and her Manassas landlords, Gia and Ernest Hairston, makes a fascinating case study. In a press release, Herring touts the outcome — the landlords paying the tenant…