This virus crisis has proved just how prescient Sanders, Warren & the Ds have been

[stopbush]

about our shitty, inadequate health care system and the scourge of income inequality and wealth distribution here in the good ol’ US of A.

And yet I don’t hear any discussion of this fact on the TV machine. Why is that?

[guillaumeb]

1. Because MFA would stop the healthcare profit machine

from making huge profits by denying healthcare to US citizens.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

2. There is no question that we have an inadequate health care system.

However, countries with single-payer systems are struggling with the pandemic, too. Italy has a single-payer system and so do the Scandinavian countries, but all of them are overwhelmed. A single-payer system is not necessarily better at delivering health care to everyone who needs it even if the cost of the treatment is government-subsidized. You have to have enough doctors, hospital beds and equipment, but Italy doesn't. Even Norway doesn't. Whether a health care system is able to respond to a dire situation involving widespread illness depends on planning and allocation of resources, not just who ends up paying the hospital bill.

[stopbush]

3. It's not a matter of single payer. It's a matter of Americans paying twice as much as others

for a healthcare system that sucks.

Too many Americans assume our system is the envy of the world, and worth the money we spend (waste) on it. It isn’t. It’s the bs meme that “Canadians come to the USA when they need surgery” crapola.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. That's true, but the fact that the virus is not being adequately dealt with in the US

has to do with the incompetence and malfeasance of Trump and his lackeys, not the medical infrastructure. If Trump hadn't dismantled the agency created to manage pandemics and hadn't pretended nothing was wrong for the better part of a month the existing medical professionals would have been way ahead of where they are. The problems dealing with the virus in this country are the result of gross mismanagement, not how much people are having to pay for treatment - an entirely separate issue.

[frazzled]

5. It wouldn't mean we would have adequate hospital beds, testing kits, ventilators

etc. on hand for a major pandemic.

M4All is insurance, it's not really "medical care." It's about being covered financially. Pandemics require emergency actions outside the realm of normal healthcare provisions.