If you read the reports in the mainstream media, you may believe that this pandemic is a once-in-a-century occurrence. But in the view of many infectious disease experts, the next pandemic may be only a few years away. And sadly the U.S. overpriced, profiteering healthcare system is totally unprepared to handle it. Look at the bang-up job they did on this one. In this article we take on the question that the healthcare system doesn’t want to answer: Why has the U.S., spending more on healthcare than any other country in the world, been unable to control the spread of COVID? Healthcare experts know— “The high U.S. death toll during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates the difficulty of achieving good health care outcomes if the population is sicker and access to preventive and primary care is limited, because of affordability.” [“Mirror, Mirror: Reflecting Poorly” Commonwealth Fund Report 8/4/21]. The U.S. healthcare system is a bust, out of reach for millions of Americans. When the coronavirus came on the scene, Americans who were already suffering from a lack of medical attention were its first victims. While fortunes were being made in healthcare boardrooms and executive suites, the U.S. record of pandemic-related hospitalizations and deaths became a national scandal. How could the most expensive healthcare system in the world bomb so dramatically when the stakes were so high? Going forward what can we do about it? There is a solution — “Single-payer Medicare for All would address some of our most pressing problems by establishing no-cost access to care for all Americans; bolstering primary care; and drastically reducing administrative costs.” [Physicians for a National Health Program]. We cover all that and lots more in “More Pandemics in Our Future? U.S. Private, Profiteering Healthcare System Can’t Stop Them. Single Payer Medicare-for-all Can.”
