A. Barton Hinkle on How Virginia Restricts Women's Choice—and Men's, Too

Dr. Mark Baumel has come up with an innovative way to perform colon-cancer screenings. He already has put it to use in Delaware. But he cannot offer the procedure in Virginia without a permission slip from the state—which the commonwealth has denied. Dr. Mark Monteferrante, a Northern Virginia radiologist, is in the same boat. When he and his partners tried to add a second MRI machine to their office a few years ago, they spent five years and $175,000 trying to get state permission. Virginia said no. Why did the state deny their applications? Not for health or safety reasons. CON regulations, writes A. Barton Hinkle, are nothing more than efforts to restrict the supply of medical care.