Over the last month, our economy has come screeching to a halt as most Americans were either ordered or encouraged to stay at home to slow the spread of the coronavirus. These measures are necessary because we must “flatten the curve” to prevent our health care system from overload.
Even Italy, where thousands of COVID-19 patients have died due to inadequate health care infrastructure, proportionately has more hospital capacity than the United States. In fact, U.S. hospital beds have drastically declined from nearly 8 per 1,000 people in 1970 to 2.9 per 1,000 people today. The reason is a little-known policy experiment: certificate-of-need laws.
