The US health care system is a for profit medical system. This has resulted in a darwinian devolution of health care. The hospitals that care too much about treating patients and not their bottom line go out of business and fold. This leaves those that balance on the brink of bankruptcy and those who make a profit at the expense of patients who are uninsured or otherwise cannot pay for their medical services. Some keep their hospitals running by over billing those who are insured and those who can afford to pay, others do it by cutting back on training and equipment that is rarely used, like training for an infectious disease like Ebola or buying the equipment needed to prevent their own workers from being infected. The CDC sends out their protocols to all the hospitals, they cannot force the hospitals to buy the equipment, and train their staffs. Once the hospitals acknowledge they have received the protocols, not that they have implemented them, it seems the CDC marks them as being prepared for Ebola. Thus stands the current US preparedness for Ebola, a hodge podge of hospitals totally prepared and some totally without a clue, with protocols sitting in some filing cabinet somewhere.