The devastation reaped by the COVID-19 pandemic is a painful lesson in the failures of our healthcare and public health systems, and the need for transformative solutions like passing Medicare for All.

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Massive crises like COVID-19 further expose the deep racial and economic injustices that exist throughout our health system, with the brunt of the crisis falling on the unhoused and communities of color. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), compared to White Americans, COVID-19 hospitalization rates among Indigenous, Black, and Latinx Americans are, respectively, 4 times, 3.7 times, and 4.1 times higher. Similarly, COVID-19 death rates among Black and Latinx Americans are 2.8 times higher than White Americans.

Los Angeles is facing a COVID-19 crisis of epic proportions. As of January 2021, Los Angeles has maintained 0% ICU capacity for weeks, with 1 in 10 Angelenos receiving a COVID-19 diagnosis. Of the roughly 2.73 million COVID-19 cases statewide, over a third are from Los Angeles County alone. With over 921,000 current cases, Los Angeles County ranks highest statewide with nearly four times more cases than San Bernardino County, which ranks second statewide. Our city also ranks highest statewide in unemployment, experiencing a roughly three-fold increase in unemployment numbers that have fallen disproportionately on Latinx and Black households. COVID-19 death rates among Latinx Angelenos is currently 2.77 times higher than for whites, while the rate for Black Angelenos is 1.73 times higher (rates as of January 9, 2021). The most recent statistics show over 66,000 total unhoused across Los Angeles County, although these numbers predate the pandemic. There is an urgent need to build significantly more emergency shelters to protect our unhoused as we work towards Housing for All as a permanent solution.

For years, our public health experts were urging lawmakers to enact new legislation that would strengthen national public health emergency preparedness protocols, replenish the National Strategic Stockpile that had been left depleted since the H1N1 pandemic in 2009, and research and implement new medical countermeasures to protect public safety. Instead, Congress didn’t reauthorize the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act - one of the main laws that outline our nation’s public health preparedness and response policies - until June 2019, just months before the very first cases of coronavirus began to emerge, and over six years after its prior reauthorization. Over the past decade, Congress has more than halved CDC’s annual emergency preparedness funding while annual defense expenditures financing endless foreign wars now equal more than half of government spending per year.  

The pandemic further exposed the ridiculousness of tying individual healthcare coverage to employment. As tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs and their employer-based healthcare coverage with it, insurance companies like Aetna, Humana, and Anthem posted quarterly earnings that were more than double pre-pandemic levels. Similarly, despite the billions American taxpayers put into COVID-19 pharmacological research and drug development, big pharma continues to reap endless profit by gouging the sales price. For example, the COVID-19 treatment drug Remdisivir was marketed by its manufacturer, Gilead, at a whopping $3,120 per treatment course despite the fact that taxpayers paid roughly $6.5 billion in research and development (R&D) costs for the same drug. So long as healthcare is operated as business rather than an inherent human right, the profligate greed of insurance and pharmaceutical companies will keep working class Americans sicker, poorer, and more vulnerable to death.

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The social, health, economic, and educational impacts of this crisis are enormous, and will take years to recover from. But the bigger problem is that we did not have to be here. We could have prevented the worst of this pandemic had we established a 21st century public health system, provided families and small businesses with the funding and resources necessary to stay closed, and were stewarded by strong, dedicated leaders that were committed to safety and healing; not division, censorship, and duplicity. 

In addition to championing bold solutions like a single-payer healthcare system under Medicare for All, Housing for All, and a Green New Deal, we must:

Provide recurring monthly survival checks of $2,000 to every American for the duration of the public health emergency, including backpay extending to the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. 

• We must stimulate the economy and uplift individuals and families that have lost income, employment, and benefits as a result of the devastating COVID-19 pandemic.

Provide full unemployment benefits to any worker - including gig, domestic, freelance, and tip-based workers - who experienced COVID-related job losses at 100% of their total wages for the duration of the pandemic.

• For salaried employees, full unemployment compensation should be capped at $90,000. 

Provide full emergency paid family and medical leave for the duration of the pandemic. 

Re-design the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) to truly service small businesses - especially minority-owned businesses - and block large corporations and Wall Street firms from raiding these funds.

• New data shows that more than half of the $522 billion appropriated for the PPP program went to just 5% of all recipients - large companies, national chains, and Wall Street backed firms. Meanwhile, small primarily Black and Brown-owned businesses were forced to shut their doors and lay off workers. This is shameful, and Congress must pass bailouts of working-class people, not wealthy companies.

Triple funding for food assistance programs like Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), Meals on Wheels, and others.

• Sufficient funding for food assistance will help ensure that low-income families, seniors, children, Tribal communities, and people with disabilities have food security during these trying economic times.

Invest $100 billion annually towards constructing, upgrading, and modernizing America’s hospitals, clinics, community health centers, and health stations.

• Our aging healthcare system contributes to the deficiencies in our COVID-19 response, as hospitals and clinics lack the necessary ICU capacity, providers, medical equipment, vaccine storage space, and other resources to adequately respond to this crisis. 

• Many clinics - especially those in rural and underserved areas - will face tremendous challenges in administering vaccines and protecting the public’s health as a result.

Place a full moratorium on evictions, rent increases, and foreclosures for the duration of the pandemic.

Place a full moratorium on student loan payments for the duration of the pandemic.

Provide $50 billion to construct emergency shelters and incentivize local governments to convert unused public property into multi-family housing units

• This can be paid in part through a new tax on real estate speculation - a process by which wealthy developers buy and flip homes in low-income neighborhoods thus driving up housing costs and worsening the impacts of gentrification.