Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to include a clarification from NC Blue Cross & Blue Shield.
Dr. Bruce Schroeder couldn’t give the best treatment to women with breast cancer. State regulations blocked him from buying up-to-date mammogram machines.
Under certificate-of-need laws, Schroeder had to get state permission before buying the machines. Schroeder couldn’t afford to apply for a CON, so he had to buy refurbished equipment. He even spent tens of thousands of dollars avoiding CON laws but then 3-D mammogram machines hit the market.
He knew his patients needed them.
But if he spent more than $500,000 on equipment, he would have to apply for a CON and endure months of waiting, legal fees, and potential lawsuits from competitors. Critics say the process favors the richest hospital systems and crushes smaller providers’ chances at competing.
The coronavirus pandemic has created a window of opportunity for school choice, says a panel of experts at a John Locke Foundation Shaftesbury.
School choice advocates want to upend education funding. They hope to tie funding to students instead of public-school systems, and they believe historic levels of learning loss could fuel their reforms.
They hope to use education savings accounts or publicly funded savings accounts that pay for government-approved education expenditures to combat learning loss and help students succeed.
The John Locke Foundation hosted a Shaftesbury with Corey DeAngelis, director of school choice at the Reason Foundation; Robert Luebke, senior fellow at the Center for Effective Education; and Terry Stoops, John Locke Foundation director of the Center for Effective Education.