The American healthcare system is only making COVID-19 worse
Doctors can't provide good care when people can't afford to go see them. (Unsplash/)As the US death toll from COVID-19 continues to rise, health authorities across the country are bracing for an onslaught of new patients even as they still grapple to understand the disease. Speaking last week, CDC spokesperson Nancy Messonier said, “We’re asking the American public to prepare in expectation that this will be bad.” Researchers say that the American healthcare system could make the outbreak much worse. In fact, “We don’t really have a system,” says Lynn Blewett, a professor of health policy and management at the University of Minnesota who studies access to care. The term “system” implies a unified plan, she says, and the patchwork of public and private care providers and millions of uninsured people that currently characterize American medicine isn’t that. According to recent numbers, almost 28 million people under the age of...