Give Your Thoughts on HB199: Freestanding Birthing Center Bill
Call or email your Kentucky state legislator to support this bill!
Message Line: 1-800-372-7181
HB199 is the Freestanding Birthing Center bill. It is a bill that the Family Foundation supports.
That bill would permit the establishment of medical clinics for child-birth and maternity care. However, as the bill is currently written, those Freestanding Birthing Centers would not be required to have Neonatal Intensive Care Units, and so, newborns in need of those services and born in one of those clinics would require immediate transport to a hospital with a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. So, there is some risk to the life of the baby in that scenario. In light of that, if a pregnant woman is giving birth to a premature baby, then it might not be so good of an idea to go to those freestanding birthing centers.
One part of the bill that we don’t like is that there is a certificate of need requirement placed on this for any medical clinic with more than four beds. Certificate of need laws are anti-competitive and unnecessary. They are laws that enable already established medical centers and ambulance companies to determine whether or not a new medical center or ambulance company is permitted to operate in the area.
From a liberty standpoint, this is a good piece of legislation except for that certificate of need law requirement. So, we desire for our legislators to amend that part so that no certificate of need law requirement would be imposed at all.
Matt Singleton and Zack Kendall have spoken about this bill in video form on our Rumble channel here.