ARLINGTON, Va.—Last week, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled against Marc N’Da, the owner of a home health agency who had sought to provide non-emergency medical transportation to his customers. The ruling continues to uphold the practice of requiring a certificate of public convenience and necessity wherein a government board decides whether a service is actually needed before allowing a business to operate. This ruling will limit healthcare access for Nebraskans who have limited or no other transportation options.

Marc runs a home health agency, and he has watched for years as his patients have been left stranded by the existing non-emergency medical transportation companies. So, Marc responded in the most American way possible—he decided to start his own company and provide better service. After all, Marc and his employees were already driving his patients on countless other errands, so there was no good reason why they couldn’t also take those same patients to the pharmacy and to their checkups.

But unfortunately, the Nebraska Legislature had created a category of rides called “non-emergency medical transportation” and outlawed anyone else from providing them.[WA1]  The only way to provide this service was to have a government board issue a certificate.

In going through the process, a government official told Marc to negotiate with the existing companies. Marc refused to do so out of principle.

The non-emergency medical transportation providers vetoed his application. They didn’t care that the government said Marc was qualified. They didn’t care that the government found that Marc met every condition except the requirement that he obtain permission from the existing businesses. They didn’t care that Marc’s business would provide badly needed help to the most-vulnerable members of our community. All the insiders cared about was that they didn’t want more competition.

So Marc teamed up with the Institute for Justice and sued. The case made it all the way to the Nebraska Supreme Court, only for the Court to rule against Marc.

“Marc’s employees can drive patients to Walmart but not the Walmart pharmacy. That makes no sense,” said IJ Attorney Will Aronin. “This ruling not only hurts Marc, but the people that hoped to use Marc’s services, leaving everyone in the state worse off.”

With a legal remedy now out of reach, the Institute for Justice calls upon the Nebraska Legislature to take up Marc’s cause, removing the monopoly that prevents him and others from providing these services.

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To arrange interviews on this subject, journalists may contact Phillip Suderman, IJ’s Communications Project Manager, at [email protected] or (850) 376-4110. More information on this subject is available at: https://ij.org/case/nebraska-con/