Free Market Control of Epidemics

One article about free market control of epidemics is here.

That article doesn’t mention that dirty hospitals and clinics are one factor responsible for the spread of infectious diseases. This occurs when sick people go to them for treatment and proper sanitation practices are not observed. In a free market system without state regulations and state inspections, would hospitals be cleaner? Yes, they would. In a regulated and socialized system of health care, competition among hospitals is diminished. A higher quality hospital has less ability to recover the higher costs of greater cleanliness and less ability to charge a higher price in the prevalent national insurance systems. Competition to improve quality is curtailed by these systems and hospitals become dirtier (and ironically more expensive too).

Hospitals are liable for infecting their patients with diseases they didn’t have when they were admitted, as by using dirty instruments. Lawsuits are difficult, however, because one must prove that the hospital has a record of such cases and one must prove a direct connection between one’s illness and the hospital. If the U.S. system of justice weren’t so monopolistic, so corrupted and so focused on drug-related cases, it might actually be able to focus on torts that really matter to people who suffer injury from those with whom they have a right to expect non-injurious services.

For those who think that the U.S. is preventing possible ebola carriers from flying into America from countries with ebola outbreaks, think again. The federal agent who leaked the news about the ineffectiveness of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said, and I quote

“This internal report, coupled with the current Ebola case in Dallas, reveals that our government is not only allowing individuals from Ebola-stricken nations to enter the U.S. with only the basic screening they give to passengers from any foreign nation, but the claims of the issue being properly addressed in the West African countries are untrue.

“The CBP is taking no action to screen individuals entering the U.S. from Ebola-stricken nations. We are doing nothing. All we are doing is asking authorities in nations with Ebola to stick a thermometer in the mouths of people boarding planes. That does nothing to keep Americans safe from Ebola.”

If the national apparatus for quarantine and screening of potentially-infected travelers were fully dismantled, we would not be worse off. We’d become better off as local and state organizations and as companies and others with an interest in preventing disease outbreaks were allowed to set up their own quarantine and/or testing measures.

The U.S. insistence on non-discrimination and its insistence on national uniformity are two roadblocks standing in the way of measures that would otherwise be demanded and implemented at less than national levels.

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3:21 pm on October 5, 2014