Paul Romer: recommendation

Transcript context

…Could it be that litigation is the ultimate reason why America is so slow in testing? That any big push for anything — someone can raise their hand and object. Someone could sue. “Well, this violates The Health Insurance Privacy Act (HIPAA).” I’m not even sure it does, but you would need a ruling. Someone sues on disabilities regulation. “Oh, I need to have this app. I can’t read it.” Someone sues about masks. “Well, I can’t do lip reading.” The actual solution — something we’re far from — and that’s to clear away all this emphasis on litigation in American policy. And economists have been mostly right about that, too. Or not? Yeah, yeah. Well, my dive into testing has persuaded me that the FDA is far more important as a force that’s slowing down progress there. There’s been speculation about lawsuits, but there’s really little indication that those will materialize. And the people I talk to who can’t do things they want to do in testing are failing to do it because of the concern about the FDA. So I don’t think the facts support that litigation is the big threat here. Also, in terms of moving quickly, I think one of the things we could leverage — because this is a public good — is the sovereign immunity of the states. I think the states can actually just purchase the test, say, with money they get from the feds and then even give instructions about “here are ways to use these tests.” Those could even be regulations. “Here is what you have to do. If you’re a restaurant, if your employees test negative, you can open. You have legal permission to open. And you have to require that people test negative. But if you do, that’s fine.” If somebody who tests negative goes to restaurants and other people get infected because of that, the restaurant could actually have the protection of the mandate from the state that this is what you should do to protect public health. So I think the states could actually provide cover for firms to do — and individuals to do — what’s best in terms of how to use this test information. Let’s say we make you testing czar, and the Romer regime is put into place. Over the first month, what percentage of Americans do you think would show up to be tested?…

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