On health care, as with so many other issues, America is a divided nation. But we should all be able to agree on at least one basic principle: People should be allowed to choose the hospital that best fits their needs and not be stuck with the hospital that Congress prefers. Yet a bipartisan coalition on Capitol Hill is seeking to deprive Americans of an important option: the specialty hospital. If some Democrats and Republicans get their way, fewer patients will have a choice of hospitals – and that would be a mistake.

At first blush, specialty hospitals may seem like an odd point of contention. When the Government Accountability Office studied the issue in 2003, it reported that at that time there were just 100 of them in America. Specialty hospitals are quite rare compared with the almost 5,000 general hospitals. And because restrictive state regulations exist in most jurisdictions, a full 60% of the hospitals are found in just two states: California and Texas.

These hospitals are part of an exciting trend toward specialization in health care. No wonder, then, that their numbers grow quickly, having tripled since 1990 and with more than 20 under construction. When they first appeared, they focused on small, simple surgeries like hernias. Today, however, they provide practically every type of care, including complex neurosurgery, women’s health, orthopedics, and cardiac surgery. Specialty hospitals have done an excellent job of making the burden of illness slightly less heavy. Many offer valet parking, private rooms, and diverse menus, for example. But the attraction of these facilities stretches beyond a non-meatloaf dinner. By specializing in one specific area, they develop expertise and efficiency.

Critics contend the opposite. They argue that specialty hospitals do little more than cherry-pick, selecting the healthiest and wealthiest patients.

And since doctors may have a partial financial stake in the hospitals, which are often for-profit, some argue that there is a conflict of interest. The Washington Post editorialized this week:

“Because doctors refer only the simpler – and therefore more profitable – cases to their own hospitals, they leave full-service community hospitals with cases that often cost more to treat than the reimbursement offered by Medicare.”

But evidence from the field suggests otherwise. Take MedCath’s 13 cardiac surgery hospitals. In a study, the Lewin Group found MedCath’s patients had a Case Mix Index (a measure of patient severity and case complexity) 20% higher than their counterparts in general hospitals. In other words, MedCath treated sicker patients. And the outcomes? MedCath patients had shorter stays, fewer complications, and mortality rates a full 17% lower. And they tend to operate at lower cost.

Even so, not everyone is persuaded. The New England Journal of Medicine published a study earlier this year concluding that the better outcomes were largely attributable to the fact that specialty hospitals do more cardiac surgery than local general-hospital competitors. Some – including the powerful American Hospital Association – have used the findings to argue against the utility of specialty hospitals. Yet the study suggests the opposite. Specialty hospitals do one thing, resulting in high volumes, and thus efficiency.

It’s easy to see why the American Hospital Association gets a bit steamed under the collar. Specialty hospitals offer a rare bit of competition in the otherwise static world of hospital care. As Nobel laureate George Stigler once noted, “competition, like exercise, is universally noted to be good for other people.” Specialty hospitals may not solve all the woes of American health care, but they do present an important option. For the gentleman requiring heart surgery or the woman with a herniated disc, they offer an alternative to the large and (all too often) impersonal general hospital.

And despite their limited scope, specialty hospitals offer competition that’s a win for consumers. When the federal Medicare Payment Advisory Commission studied this issue in 2004, it noted that general hospitals tend to shape up when faced with competition, investing in better equipment and making operating schedules more flexible. And let’s not feel too badly for the general hospitals. After all, most operate under not-for-profit status that offers a significant number of competitive advantages, including breaks on property taxes, as well as federal and state income tax.

All this would seem cause to celebrate. But Congress has hardly been sympathetic to the specialty hospitals. The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 placed a moratorium on Medicare payments to new specialty hospitals, effectively banning them. That moratorium has now expired, but a bipartisan effort threatens the hospitals again. The administration hopes to keep the moratorium going until January, to better study the issue. Senator Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, and Senator Baucus, a Democrat of Montana, want to prevent doctors from referring patients to specialty hospitals in which the doctors have a financial stake, to prevent conflict of interest. But this issue has been studied enough and existing laws already deal with physician ownership issues.

Washington must resist the urge to act. American patients deserve the opportunity to decide where they’ll seek their own care.

Dr. Gratzer, a physician, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.