The COVID Crisis and Our Healthcare System
borders, boroughs of New York, China, COVID-19, elderly people, Europe, experts, government planners, healthcare, Iran, Italy, Manhattan, mass transit, Medicine, mortality, New York City, nursing homes, officials, pandemic, patients, prisons, Queens, socialism, Staten Island, statism, United States, Venezuela, Wuhan, xenophobia
An essay by a pair of economists in Foreign Policy magazine pins the blame for our pandemic crisis on deficiencies in our health care system. It recommends a variety of interventions, each of which (predictably) entails more government control of health care by experts like… the authors of the essay. To see the COVID response as signifying a failure of the healthcare system is an insult to the brave and skilled people who responded so effectively to this virus, including colleagues at my own hospital on New York’s corona frontline. The authors, and others who think similarly, misunderstand the roots of the crisis and misunderstand the role the health care system has played. More importantly, they misunderstand the role of statism in generating this pandemic. Retooled Overnight Given the unexpected…