(CNN) When doctors risk their lives and sacrifice their livelihoods to go to West Africa and provide desperately needed treatment to those suffering from Ebola, what should be their reward upon coming home?

Three weeks off, some say whether they like it or not.

The governors of New York and New Jersey instituted just such a policy Friday, announcing that airport screening will be stepped up in their states and that any arriving passengers whod recently been in the West African nations hit hardest by Ebola could be hospitalized or quarantined for up to 21 days sick or not.

Measures such as these would affect people who lived in or traveled to countries such as Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, where all but a handful of the more than 10,000 documented Ebola cases and almost 5,000 deaths have occurred. And it would also impact those who brought their medical expertise to West Africa, doing what they could to prevent more people from dying or spreading the disease.

So theres a tradeoff: Should the focus of American policy be to do everything to prevent anyone from the most ravaged regions from entering the United States, even if it discourages health care workers from going there?

On Saturday, the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention said that it sets the baseline recommended standards, but state and local officials have the prerogative to set tighter policies.

When it comes to the federal standards set by the CDC, we will consider any measures that we believe have the potential to make the American people safer, the CDC said in a statement.

Some U.S. lawmakers, such as Rep. Andy Harris, favor a strict three-week quarantine. (That time duration is significant because it takes anywhere from two to 21 days from the time a person is exposed to Ebola to when he or she shows symptoms of it; if more time than that passes without symptoms, a person is considered Ebola-free.)

In return from being allowed to come back into the country from a place where a deadly disease is endemic, youd have to enter a quarantine facility and be supervised for 21 days, the Maryland Republican told CNN.

Some, though, think such a policy would be counterproductive. It might prevent some cases of Ebola in the United States over the short term, they say, but over the long run it could backfire if highly trained American doctors have even more incentive not to head to Africa to help corral the disease.

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