Early in the response to the pandemic, localities hard-hit by COVID-19 invited medical professionals working in more fortunate places to temporarily relocate and help treat afflicted patients. To make such moves possible, state governments suspended or loosened licensing requirements that would otherwise delay and discourage doctors, nurses, and others hoping to lend a hand. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services similarly eased restrictions on cross-border practice of medicine, telehealth, testing, and other services. The Food and Drug Administration stepped-down regulation of personal protective equipment and medical devices. Local governments cut all sorts of red tape to make life a bit easier.
Many rules that served as tedious bureaucratic obstructionism in good times were quickly revealed as dangerous and potentially deadly during a crisis and tossed aside. And that’s where those rules should remain after the pandemic is gone—on the garbage heap of failed authoritarian policy.
“Sometimes, destruction may create an opportunity for future growth, if the destruction includes the piled-up layers of interest group guano that coats the gears of the system,” writes Michael Munger, a professor of political science, economics, and public policy at Duke University. “Our systems of occupational licensing—always a mook’s game, but now clearly preventing rapid response to emergencies in other states—drug and medical equipment certification, and regulating employment in the ‘gig’ economy, have all been shown to be catastrophic. The economic justification for these grants and set-asides was never persuasive. Let’s get rid of them!”
Get rid of them, indeed! But how much guano are we talking about?
Heaps.