'Medicare for all' wouldn't have better prepared us for the coronavirus

By Washington Examiner

March 30, 2020 - 12:00 AM 

The rapid spread of the coronavirus has prompted those who already have been advocating for socialized medicine to argue that the crisis somehow proves them right.

"Our country is at a severe disadvantage compared to every other major country on earth because we do not guarantee healthcare to all people as a right," Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has claimed in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

One of his surrogates, David Sirota, tweeted, “Coronavirus is a national security threat to America. The corporate-run, for-profit healthcare system is exacerbating that threat. @BernieSanders' Medicare for All plan is a weapon to combat the threat. Pass it on.” 

In the midst of a fast-moving virus, in which data are changing every day, and in which governments are taking different reactions in response to that data, it’s difficult to draw any concrete conclusions about whether one type of healthcare system is working better than another.

But the data we do have does not support the notion that the United States would have fared better had the nation had something akin to “Medicare for all.”

The vicious coronavirus has ripped through countries regardless of their healthcare systems.

The virus started in China, a communist country that provides health coverage to everybody.

Italy, which has been a poster child for the worst-case scenario in confronting the coronavirus, has a system that automatically covers everybody and provides urgent care for illegal immigrants. Just 1% of the spending in the Italian healthcare system comes from private health insurance. Though the U.S., as of this writing, has more cases than Italy (about 133,000 to 98,000), it is 5.5 times the population of Italy. Were one to adjust the Italy total for the population of the U.S., it would have the equivalent of over a half-million cases. More importantly, nearly 11,000 Italians have died — an insane fatality rate of about 11%. That compares to 1.7% in the U.S.

Spain, which is starting to rival Italy as one of the global hot spots, has a system of guaranteed universal coverage and a fatality rate of over 8%. So does the United Kingdom and France,which have case fatality rates of 6% and 7%, respectively.

To be sure, the fact that the U.S. has a healthcare system with a larger role for private insurance has not spared hospitals from facing the prospect of being overrun by cases. Nor has the nation been immune from shortages of ventilators, masks, swabs, and other medical equipment. Also, the U.S. is at an earlier point in the curve than other countries, and it can take weeks for people infected with a severe case of the COVID-19 virus to actually die. The grim reality is that the U.S. could end up worse off than these other countries when all of the numbers are in.

But it should be said that one of the biggest American failures, the slow rollout of testing was a result of mistakes by regulators and government bureaucrats at the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which would only authorize one government test for the coronavirus, which turned out to be defective. It was only after the Trump administration removed regulations and solicited help from private labs that the U.S. was actually able to ramp up testing.

Once the U.S. gets past the current crisis, there will no doubt be a lot of lessons to learn. But the data available now does not support the conclusion that having a socialized healthcare system would have made things better. 

-Justin Thyme-Two cents worth of opinion. 

Remember fellow conservative Americans. It is census time. If you are a resident of a Red District be sure to fill out your census form. Everybody counts and that means perhaps more conservative representatives will be added. But if you are a liberal, don't bother. Just do what you usually do and sit around on your arse and only go to the mail box to see if your gubbamint check came. 😉