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Tuesday, March 24th, 2020

America’s extreme neoliberal healthcare system is putting the country at risk

Author:     Adam Gaffney
Source:     Guardian (U.K.)
Publication Date:     Sat 21 Mar 2020 06.32 EDT
 Link: America’s extreme neoliberal healthcare system is putting the country at risk
Stephan:   Yet another voice saying what I have been saying for years; a point made more dramatic because of the failures of the illness profit system in this pandemic. My hope is that the one good thing to come out of this mess is the recognition that we must have universal birthright single-payer healthcare; a system whose first priority is wellbeing not profit.

Trump signed into law a bill that would make Covid-19 testing – but not treatment – free.’
Credit: Vanessa Carvalho/REX/Shutterstock

At the final debate of the Democratic presidential primary on Sunday, Senator Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden clashed on the coronavirus. Sanders contended the pandemic laid bare “the incredible weakness and dysfunctionality” of the US healthcare system, and called for single-payer reform. Biden countered that Italy’s universal system had failed to protect the Mediterranean nation, and asserted that Covid-19 “has nothing to do with Bernie’s Medicare for All”. At first glance, the ex-vice-president seems right: of course single-payer can’t close the door to a novel virus, any more than it can forestall a deadly earthquake or fend off a zombie apocalypse. Nonetheless, a national health program with unified financing and governance – basically the opposite of what we have in America today – is a powerful tool in a health crisis.

The debate over Medicare for All in the age of Covid-19 is complicated by the fact that it is our […]

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