By the Alaska Legislative Digest

The House Health, Education and Social Services Committee will take up Gov. Sarah Palin’s House Bill 337 setting up a 10-member Health Planning Commission and, more significantly, also repealing the state health facility certificate of need process, long a controversial issue. The certificate is a state permit that authorizes a major investment in a health facility. Entrepreneurs in the health services field, mainly physician groups, feel that major health care providers like hospitals, which have the permits for their facilities, use the system to shut out competition by opposing permits for competing facilities, usually specialty day clinics. The governor’s unexpected support of repeal of the CON in her State of the State speech has made this one of the most controversial issues of the 2008 session.