| Hello John, Across the country, patients are waiting longer for care, traveling farther to see providers, and paying more when they finally do. Emergency rooms are overcrowded. Rural hospitals are closing. Primary care appointments are harder to find. We’re told these shortages are unavoidable, but they’re not. Here’s the problem: Many of today’s health care shortages are the direct result of government mandates that limit who can provide care, where care can be delivered, and how quickly new providers can enter the system. Health care is not immune to the laws of supply and demand. When supply is restricted, prices rise and access declines. Yet government policy consistently works to limit supply. 🔍 Let’s unpack what’s behind these shortages and how the Personal Option fixes them. Certificate-of-need laws help explain rural health care shortages: - These laws require health care providers to get government permission before opening new facilities, expanding services, or purchasing equipment.
- In practice, CON laws allow existing hospitals to block competition.
- The result is fewer providers, longer wait times, and higher prices — especially in rural and underserved areas. CON laws don’t protect patients. They protect entrenched interests. They need to go.
Government mandates also restrict who can deliver care: - In many states, nurse practitioners and physician assistants are prevented from practicing to the full extent of their training.
- These professionals are more than capable of providing routine and preventive care, yet outdated rules force patients to wait longer or travel farther just to see a doctor.
At a time when primary care shortages are growing, limiting qualified providers makes no sense. These restrictions don’t improve quality. They only reduce access. Telehealth has shown enormous promise: - For many, especially seniors, rural communities, and families with limited access to care, telehealth provides access to good doctors outside their area.
- But government licensing rules often prevent providers from treating patients across state lines, even virtually.
Instead of allowing competition and innovation, these mandates lock health care into outdated models. Patients lose choice. Providers lose flexibility. Costs go up. ⚠️ We need real accountability in health care. When shortages appear, politicians rarely admit that government caused them. Instead, they double down: They call for more regulation, more spending, or price controls. But failed policies only make shortages worse. - Price controls discourage providers from expanding services. New mandates increase paperwork and compliance costs. The system becomes more rigid, more expensive, and less responsive to patient needs.
- Health care shortages won’t be solved by growing government control. They’ll be solved by allowing more care to be delivered by more providers in more settings, in a freer and more competitive marketplace.
🩺 That’s where the Personal Option comes in. The Personal Option means shorter waits, lower costs, and better access. That starts by ditching the mandate mindset choking the system. Among other things, that means repealing certificate-of-need laws, modernizing scope-of-practice rules, and removing unnecessary licensing barriers that block telehealth and medical provider competition. It means trusting trained professionals to do their jobs and trusting patients to make choices about their care. After all, health care should work for patients, not bureaucrats. If reducing government barriers in health care sounds good to you, let your representatives know you want a Personal Option! Shortages are not inevitable. They are man-made — policy-made — and only good policy can fix them. Thank you for standing with us. -Dean
Dean Clancy
Senior Health Policy Fellow
Americans for Prosperity
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