For decades, we have swept our health care problems under the rug for posterity to trip over. And right now, posterity is flat on its face.
Let me ask you this: Whether you believe high quality health care is a basic human right or just a privilege to be earned (I argued the former here), what do you think about 5.4 million Americans losing health insurance in the middle of the worst health care crisis in more than 100 years, because they lost their jobs?
One of the many terrible things COVID-19 has done is to expose our health care foundational flaws for all the world to see. For example, if there is ever a time not to lose health insurance it is during a pandemic. Another deep and open wound suddenly exposed to bright light is the abominable, even obscene, way in which COVID-19 has been allowed to impact the African American, Native American and LatinX communities. Health care is neither universal nor applied equally throughout the country.
As far back as 2008, I, along with others, documented the many ways our health care system, if you can call it that, lags behind the rest of the developed world*, in some case far behind. This, despite costing twice as much as the average of the other 36 member countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 25 of whom are members of the European Union. Since then, except for the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), things have only gotten worse, and the ACA has been flayed, gutted and nearly beaten to death more than once. It should not, but it does to many, come as any surprise that the EU countries are performing significantly better in the battle against COVID-19 than we are, despite having a total population that is 27% greater than America’s. These two charts prove the point:
First, Population – From the World Bank:
Second, COVID-19 cases – from Johns Hopkins University and Statista as of 30 July, seven days ago:
What more does one need to see to conclude America’s response to COVID-19 has been tragically woeful?
Yesterday, I was speaking with a friend, a pulmonologist who has been on COVID-19’s front lines in Massachusetts since March. He and his patients, a number of whom are no longer with us, have been through a lot. His biggest complaint? The lack of “consistent, cohesive and comprehensive leadership from the federal government.” He said, “I’m a God-fearing man, but right now my God is science.”
The rug under which we swept our problems has been pulled up, and bad things have crept out into the light of day. But COVID-19, for all its horror and misery, has presented us with an opportunity. When this is over, and someday it will be, we will have an opportunity, nay, an imperative, to build a better American health care program, less fragmented, less costly, less complicated, and universally provided to every person within the confines of our nation’s borders. If the leaders we elect have even a modicum of courage, if they have entered public service to actually serve the public – all of it – we and they may be able to take the iniquity of this virus and leverage it to the point where health care in this nation, rather than having to be earned as a privilege, available only to people who can afford it, becomes a basic human right for all of us.
* The link is to the conclusion of a 5-part series. For the first four parts, enter “The best health care in the world” in the search box on the right sidebar
Tags: health policy
