Socialism is alive and well right in my backyard. This article describes how militant central planners are trying to prevent a local hospital chain, Adventist Healthcare, from building a new emergency department in my town, Germantown, Maryland, which is a booming suburb of Washington DC. An excerpt:

Adventist HealthCare is seeking permission from the Maryland Health Care Commission to operate a 24-hour emergency department with five inpatient beds at Route 118 and Middlebrook Road in Germantown as a satellite of Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville.

The 27,000-square-foot emergency department intends to meet the growing health care needs of the upcounty. The commission must grant the project — the first of its kind in the state — a certificate of need to proceed.

There is no question that there is great demand among Germantown residents for a new facility. The closest existing emergency department, a 40 minute drive during rush hour, is badly overcrowded. More than 4,000 residents have signed a petition in support of a new facility.

But in Maryland no one can build a new hospital or emergency department without first obtaining permission from a state agency called the Health Care Commission. The premise behind this system is that central coordination prevents redundancy in health care infrastructure, holding health care costs down, whereas market competition leads to excess capacity, driving health care costs up.

Barbara McLean, the commission’s executive director, explained her opposition to the Germantown project this way:

“We question the wisdom of setting up that kind of system,” McLean said. The proposal in effect would create a five-bed hospital without the majority of services normally provided at a hospital and in an area that currently has no need for another hospital, she said.

It would “ultimately lead to the proliferation of small, specialty hospitals providing extremely limited services and add unnecessary costs to the health care system,” according to the report.

Aghh. The Soviet Union may no longer exist, but this little hometown episode is a vexing reminder that we are still being led by the nose down Hayek’s Road to Serfdom.

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