ALLOWING DOCTORS AND NURSES TO PRACTICE ACROSS STATE LINES WAS “EXCELLENT IDEA” EVEN BEFORE PANDEMIC
Healthcare economist Robert Graboyes, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center, is praising the Department of Health and Human Service’s emergency regulation allowing physicians, nurses and other medical care professionals to practice across state lines.
“A national market for healthcare providers is an excellent idea during the best of times, but coronavirus killing patients around the globe adds an unprecedented urgency to such policies,” Graboyes says. “Time and resources are limited, and medical institutions need to be able to move resources about the crisis at a moment’s notice. I usually hesitate to compare domestic policies to military operations, but, frankly, the pandemic puts us on the operational equivalent of war.”
He similarly supports Medicare’s decision this week to expand telehealth coverage for seniors nationwide and argued against barriers to out-of-state telemedicine practice. Graboyes called for remaining operational restrictions on medical care to be “swept away as quickly as possible” amid the pandemic.
Please let me know if you’d like to speak to Bob about reforms that can help deliver vital treatment. He testified to Congress in November on innovation in healthcare delivery, and detailed the benefits of more flexible regulation in an op-ed last week.