The Grumpy Economist is grumpy.

Nicholas Kristof in Sunday's New York Times asks a pressing -- often quite pressing -- question. Why are there no public toilets in America? He is right. He calls for a federal infrastructure plan to fix the problem: "Sure, we need investments to rebuild bridges, highways and, yes, electrical grids, but perhaps America’s most disgraceful infrastructure failing is its lack of public toilets."

Now, put on your economist hat. Or even put on your reporter hat. Ask the question why are there no public toilets in America?

John Cochrane on Economic Puzzles and Habits of Mind

I mean, the biggest original sin I see now in our healthcare system is cross-subsidies. The government wants to provide for poor people and other people. It doesn’t want to make them pay — or old people — they don’t want to pay, but the government doesn’t want to raise taxes and provide their healthcare.

So, what the government does is, it tells hospitals, for example, “You must treat everybody who walks in the emergency room.” The hospital says, “That’s nice, where do we get money from?” Then the government says, “You can overcharge private employer-provided insurance, which will force employers to give, and you can overcharge the few cash-paying customers who come in.”

The problem with that is you can’t allow competition. If you’re overcharging people, then you can’t allow hospital B to come in and say, “We’re going to offer less price, and we won’t even have an emergency room.” So you’ve killed competition. That I think is the original sin, the deepest problem in our healthcare system.

They just recently said hospitals have to disclose prices. Heavens, disclose prices! Well, that’s a sign this is a horribly uncompetitive business. An airline that tried to not disclose prices until you get off the plane would be bankrupt because no one would go there. There’s competition in the airlines.