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DEL.ICIO.USBecause when a budget fight swamps the Legislature, everything else sinks into the bog
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Many reasons stand behind Tuesday’s failure by the House to pass a bill with changes to the way the state licenses hospitals and other, competing institutions, as demanded by private-care interests.
The most simplistic is that all parties involved — doctors, private hospital chains, public hospital chains, even nursing homes — have deep pockets and are worth shaking down for another years’ worth of campaign donations.
Another theory is that the issue of health services across the state is so complicated that — like transportation — it needs a whip hand to guide it through the process. Without Gov. Sonny Perdue to lead the discussion, the effort never stood a chance.
Here’s another thought: The so-called certificate of need bill (there were several versions, including the governor’s, but only one was to pass) was floundering just as House Republican leaders were battening down hatches for their biggest budget confrontation with the Senate in years — perhaps decades.
The fight is likely to sour everything around it. And probably would have doomed any consensus on a certificate of need bill. It became just another deck chair to be thrown overboard when the call to battle stations came.
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