A new Public Citizen white paper details how the US would have been far better prepared for the novel coronavirus pandemic had we had Medicare for All. Our for-profit multi-payer health care system does not afford the nation the tools to address COVID-19 effectively and keeps Americans from getting needed care. If everyone in the nation had coverage, we could have saved thousands of lives.
The US was unprepared for COVID-19. There are huge fissures in our health care system because we rely on for-profit insurers to cover our care. For-profit health insurers cost us more than we should be spending and deliver far worse health outcomes than peer countries.
The US has far fewer hospital beds and physicians than most other wealthy countries. We lacked the capacity to hospitalize all the COVID-19 patients who needed inpatient care. Germany and Japan, which offer universal health care, have far greater capacity to treat their residents in hospital.
Of the 25 wealthiest countries in the world, the US is the only country not to guarantee its people access to health care. As a consequence, one in five of all people who have died of COVID-19 have been from the US, even though the US represents just five percent of the world’s population. Worse still, the toll has been disproportionately hard on communities of color.
Eight-seven million people in the US were underinsured or uninsured pre-pandemic, and millions more were uninsured post-pandemic because they lost their jobs. Not surprisingly four in ten people who contracted COVID-19 did not have insurance to cover their care. It’s likely that many of them never got treatment. One in three people in the US report foregoing needed health care because of the cost.
Medicare for All would have saved many thousands of lives in the US. It would make it far easier for everyone who needed care to get the care they needed. It would provide the funding that hospitals need–especially rural hospitals–to address a pandemic. It would allow for better continuity of care and coordination of care. It would promote health and racial equity.
Here’s more from Just Care:
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