COVID-19 has exposed how poorly prepared the U.S. healthcare system is to handle an epidemic, getting ill in the United States carries the extra burden of potential financial ruin. We need to move to a National Improved Medicare for All health system and paid medical leave as rapidly as possible.

While most of the developed world has been dealing with the impact of the pandemic in a reasonable fashion — caring for the sick, burying the dead, enforcing lockdowns and the sort of distancing and masking that seems so necessary—it’s played out differently here in the good old U.S. of A. Here, we have a pandemic-plus—plus a broken social safety net, a for-profit healthcare system, a war of disinformation, and that’s just to start down a list of add-on disasters.