The coronavirus pandemic has laid bare two fundamental flaws in the American health care system.
Number one: There’s a reason that other rich countries treat health care as a taxpayer-financed social program. Employer-based health insurance was stupid before COVID-19 because the U.S. economy was already steadily transitioning from traditional full-time jobs to self-employment, freelance and gig work.
The virus has exposed the insanity of this arrangement. Millions of Americans have been fired over the last two months; now they find themselves uninsured during a global health emergency. The unemployed theoretically face fines for the crime of no longer being able to afford to buy private health care.