How Covid-19 could make Americans healthier
A once-in-a-century pandemic provides a once-in-a-lifetime chance to improve public health.
Illustration by Jenn Liv
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Joanne Kenen is POLITICO’s executive health care editor.
If you tried to design a weapon customized to exploit every weakness in the U.S. health care system, you might have come up with SARS-CoV-2: the novel coronavirus.
The pandemic caused by that spiky virus, now in its second year, has rampaged across the country in part because our disease defense system the critical but neglected discipline known as “public health” has been so starved of resources for so long that it had been effectively dismantled before the coronavirus arrived. Without robust disease surveillance, stockpiles of emergency equipment and a skilled public health work force, we were all but defenseless.
FILE - In this Jan. 4, 2021, file photo, Wisconsin Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, R-Kaukauna, left, talks with Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, during the first 2021-22 legislative session in the Assembly Chambers at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. Wisconsin s Republican-controlled Legislature has repealed Democratic Gov. Evers statewide mask mandate Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. Health experts have warned against repealing the mandate, saying masks are probably the most effective way to slow the spread of COVID-19. (Amber Arnold/Wisconsin State Journal via AP, File)
MADISON, Wis. Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers issued a new statewide mask order on Thursday, an hour after the Republican-controlled Legislature voted to repeal his previous mandate saying he didn t have authority to make such a decree.
Lawmakers in Hawaii, Maine, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Rhode Island and Washington are considering changes that are designed to control costs for patients.