[Peace-discuss] What we should do about Covid

[J.B. Nicholson]

C. G. Estabrook pointed us to:
> https://www.statnews.com/2020/07/14/fix-covid-19-dumpster-fire-us/

I think the article offers some good advice but it also has a notable gap which bears 
mentioning -- Medicare for All. I think any proper national healthcare structural 
discussion which leaves out Medicare for All is incomplete at best. Particularly in 
the midst of a pandemic.

With regard to two particular sections in the article:

* The entire "Cut out the politics" section is either too vague to be taken seriously 
or the article is self-conflicting. The very next section of the essay entitled 
"Provide more help for the hardest hit" offers advice along the lines of "cut out the 
politics" as a means of silencing discussion of political views they don't like. I'll 
offer one such view below.

* The "Provide more help for the hardest hit" section says that:
> Fixing this means providing income support so people who are sick or exposed can 
> stay home, and ensuring they have sick leave and family medical leave. It also 
> means funding unemployment insurance for the millions of people who have lost 
> their jobs in the pandemic, and extending rent forgiveness and moratoriums on 
> evictions and foreclosures, [...] as well as providing safe places for people who
> need to isolate or quarantine but don’t have the space to do it at home.

Fixing this should include passing Medicare for All, which is a practical means of 
helping the poor afford the healthcare which they'll certainly need (particularly 
during a pandemic). Medicare for All is left out of the article.

Most Americans supported Medicare for All before the pandemic and they continue to 
support Medicare for All now. We should make elected officials afraid of us on the 
basis of Medicare for All alone -- encourage voting against running incumbents who, 
apparently, have not pushed for Medicare for All (even the so-called 'progressives' 
like Sen. Sanders and Rep. Jayapal who have both abandoned their respective Medicare 
for All bills in the Senate & House, respectively, and House Speaker Rep. Pelosi who 
is a long-time opponent of Medicare for All).

The Democrats are no opposition party. They apparently stand as a bulwark against the 
very Medicare for All legislation which we need now. If voting in progressives gets 
us this outcome, it's difficult to see how voting in more progressives will help us. 
Leaving out the politics leaves no room for telling Congress to cancel their 
vacations, get back to work passing both of those bills, and forcing/embarrassing the 
other establishment party to go along with passing those bills. I don't care which 
bill wins or if it's some amenable union of both. With the proper political will this 
could all happen in one day.

In light of the continuing wave of not paying rent/mortgage, the subsequent evictions 
(now that rent & eviction moratoriums are ending), and more people losing their jobs 
(and any healthcare tied to their jobs) per 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAppR4uGbWI [1], it seems reasonable to expect that 
even more people will declare bankruptcy due to unaffordably high medical costs. 
Medicare for All could help avoid more medical bankruptcies, a problem which predates 
COVID-19. We don't need to bother with establishment rhetoric asking how to pay for 
Medicare for All. Medicare for All costs less than what HMO payers are currently 
paying and recent trillions have shown us we can apparently afford.

[1] RT news piece on "Jobless US: Another 1.3mn Americans file 'first-time jobless' 
claims but execs keep on cashing in"

I'm all for "guid[ing our COVID-19 response] by science" but that should include some 
economic science too: we know from other western countries that see to all of their 
citizens' healthcare needs in an affordable way: that approach costs less per capita 
than Americans currently pay and that approach delivers better healthcare outcomes 
than America has shown.

See what I mean about politics which some would rather not discuss versus good ideas 
that are 'political'?

-J