We Can’t Have An Economic Recovery If We Don’t Improve Health Care Right Now
We must not choose between staving off economic catastrophe or a public health disaster. We can do both — if we immediately expand Medicare to cover everyone while safely and simultaneously rebuilding our healthcare infrastructure."
An ambulance sits parked on the plaza outside the US Capitol March 16, 2020 in Washington, DC.Drew Angerer / Getty
The United States confronts two interrelated problems that make the coronavirus pandemic uniquely devastating — a lack of a functioning health care system, and an inability to organize and implement an effective quarantine.
If free mass testing had been available early on, and if the production of protective equipment, bed capacity, and ventilators had immediately ramped up under government direction, nationwide shelter-in-place orders might not have been necessary, as they were not in east Asian countries that have more effectively responded to the virus.
But now that they are absolutely necessary, they’re still not in place — compounding an already horrifying situation.
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