COVID-19 Has Revealed America’s Broken Health Care System: What Can We Learn?

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed long-standing system problems of US health care ranging from access barriers, uncontrolled prices and costs, unacceptable quality, widespread disparities and inequities, and marginalization of public health. All of these have been well documented by international comparisons. Our largely privatized market-based system and medical-industrial complex have been ill equipped to respond effectively to the pandemic. The accompanying economic downturn exacerbates these problems that further reveal the failures of our largely for-profit private health insurance industry, dependent as it is on continued government subsidies while it profiteers on the backs of vulnerable Americans. This article brings historical perspective to these problems, and provides markers of the extent of our unpreparedness and ineffective response to the pandemic. Coherent national health and public health policies are urgently needed based on evidence-based science, not political pressures. Financing reform is necessary, such as through single-payer Medicare for All. Eight takeaway lessons are summarized that can help to inform now best to rebuild US health care and public health, an urgent task for the incoming Biden administration.