Thursday, February 28, 2008

Letting commerce flow

I could possibly have considered going the other way on this, but on balance, the Register editorialized, the Supreme Court's decision to immunize makers of medical devices who had fulfilled FDA requirements from lawsuits at the state level was correct. Of course my preference someday would be for the FDA to be abolished (its regulatory costs and delays have led to more deaths than saved lives), but if there are to be regulations, adding litigation to the mix simply facilitates the search for deep pockets. A case can be made that a society can rely on either the tort system or a regulatory scheme to create incentives for safety, but using both is overkil that raises prices and deters innovation.l

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