America Has No Real Public Health Care System- Coronavirus Has A Clear Run: Robert Reich
'America has no real public health system coronavirus has a clear run.' Robert Reich, The Guardian, March 15, 2020. Trumps response has been inadequate but the system is rigged anyway. As always, the poor will be hit hardest.
Dr Anthony S Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and just about the only official in the Trump administration trusted to tell the truth about the coronavirus, said last Thursday: The system does not, is not really geared to what we need right now
It is a failing, lets admit it. While were at it, lets admit something more basic. The system would be failing even under a halfway competent president. The dirty little secret, which will soon become apparent to all, is that there is no real public health system in the United States.
The ad hoc response fashioned late Friday by House Democrats and the White House may help a bit, although its skimpy, as Ill explain. As the coronavirus outbreak in the US follows the same grim exponential growth path first displayed in Wuhan, China, before herculean measures were put in place to slow its spread there, America is waking up to the fact that it has almost no public capacity to deal with it.
Instead of a public health system, we have a private for-profit system for individuals lucky enough to afford it and a rickety social insurance system for people fortunate enough to have a full-time job. At their best, both systems respond to the needs of individuals rather than the needs of the public as a whole. In America, the word public as in public health, public education or public welfare means a sum total of individual needs, not the common good. Contrast this with Americas financial system. The Federal Reserve concerns itself with the health of financial markets as a whole. Late last week the Fed made $1.5tn available to banks, at the slightest hint of difficulties making trades. No one batted an eye. When it comes to the health of the nation as a whole, money like this isnt available. And there are no institutions analogous to the Fed with responsibility for overseeing and managing the publics health able to whip out a giant checkbook at a moments notice to prevent human, rather than financial, devastation.
Even if a test for the Covid-19 virus had been developed and approved in time, no institutions are in place to administer it to tens of millions of Americans free of charge. Local and state health departments are already bare bones, having lost nearly a quarter of their workforce since 2008, according to the National Association of County and City Health Officials. Healthcare in America is delivered mainly by private for-profit corporations which, unlike financial institutions, are not required to maintain reserve capacity. As a result, the nations supply of ventilators isnt nearly large enough to care for projected numbers of critically ill coronavirus victims unable to breathe for themselves. Its 45,000 intensive care unit beds fall woefully short of the 2.9 million likely to be needed.
The Fed can close banks to quarantine financial crises but the US cant close workplaces because the nations social insurance system depends on people going to work. Almost 30% of American workers have no paid sick leave from their employers, including 70% of low-income workers earning less than $10.49 an hour. Vast numbers of self-employed workers cannot afford sick leave. Fridays deal between House Democrats and the White House wont have much effect because it exempts large employers and offers waivers to smaller ones...
More, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/15/america-public-health-system-coronavirus-trump
lunasun
(21,646 posts)Response to appalachiablue (Original post)
democratisphere This message was self-deleted by its author.
at140
(6,110 posts)and I feel I am over-protected. Because my doctor keeps wanting me to make appointment every 6 months.
I am healthy and do not need to see the doctor twice a year when I am not sick. That time can be used better by others who are actually sick.
at140
(6,110 posts)that CDC was solely responsible for creating and authorizing manufacturing of test kits.
Is that true? If yes, why was that job not farmed out to companies like Quest Diagnostics and others?
That would have speeded things up.
appalachiablue
(41,171 posts)'Why has coronavirus testing in the US been such a disaster? The Trump administration is scrambling to provide more testing, leaving many to wonder how it got its Covid-19 response so wrong. The Guardian, March 13, 2020.
...What explains this abysmal failure? Failure is right. Thats precisely the word that Dr Anthony Fauci, one of the top US officials dealing with the crisis, used to describe the testing fiasco on Thursday. A number of problems contributed to the disaster. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which is marshaling federal testing, botched its rollout of test kits in February, sending out faulty materials. A bottleneck then ensued, with states all having to send their samples to the CDCs headquarters in Atlanta for analysis which slowed results down.
The federal government was also too controlling of the process, preventing states and private laboratories running their own decentralized efforts. The criteria for testing was set far too tightly. Doctors were initially told they could only test people who had traveled to China or had close contact with infected individuals. Only now can doctors freely offer testing, and even so there are simply not enough kits to go round.
So how bad is the shortfall? Extremely bad. A few statistics put it in perspective. South Korea, which is increasingly being seen as a model of good practice, has been testing up to 15,000 people a day and has reached more than 230,000 people...https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/13/coronavirus-testing-us
Laelth
(32,017 posts)-Laelth