Patient-Centered Healthcare

West Virginians deserve a healthcare system that competes for them. What they have instead is one that competes against them.

Decades of regulatory barriers, unchecked consolidation, and unenforced accountability standards have produced a system that works well for incumbent institutions—and poorly for everyone else. West Virginians face some of the highest rates of medical debt, some of the least competitive hospital markets, and some of the worst health outcomes in the nation. Physicians and other providers who want to compete, innovate, or simply practice independently face a thicket of regulations that have nothing to do with quality and everything to do with protecting market share. The Cardinal Institute is documenting why these failures persist and what it will take to fix them.

Our healthcare research examines the laws, financing mechanisms, and market distortions that insulate the status quo from competition and accountability. Each paper builds on the last. We examine the rules that block new providers from entering the market, the subsidies flowing to systems that aren't meeting their public obligations, and the state programs that have drifted from their original purpose.

The goal isn’t more regulation. It’s a system where patients have real choices, providers are free to compete and care for them, and markets—not government gatekeepers—determine who gets to serve.