A new study by Kaiser Health News and The Associated Press brings us even grimmer news about this nation's ability to respond to the escalating COVID-19 pandemic with a reminder that public health services never really recovered from the 2008 Great Recession. The AP and KHN determined that "at least 38,000" state and local public health services positions have been lost since the recession.
Funding for state and local health departments was cut 16% and 18% respectively, since that time. So we're not just attempting to fight a global pandemic with our regularly underfunded public health offices, we're attempting to fight it with the slashed budgets of the last financial crisis. During an even more severe financial crisis. Yeah, we're boned.
There's not really any non-radical way back out of this. Absent a massive spending program on order of what the Treasury Department has devoted toward propping up Wall Street—which is never going to happen—state and local health departments are going to be slashed sharply, yet again, as local governments teeter on the edges of post-pandemic bankruptcy. Republican efforts to end the Affordable Care Act continue, and may be successful.
The two remaining choices would be to give up, or to burn everything down and start over. And honestly, the public seems to be in a playing-with-matches sort of mood right now.
While the AP report is mostly a reminder that public services are always, always underfunded until we need them, then underfunded again the moment we don't, there is little to nothing that can be done about it at the moment. In the warm southern states, the pandemic is escalating to the point that hospitals are now filling up, just as they did in New York City, and we can expect cases to skyrocket in the colder northern states as winter draws nearer. Whatever summer break in the pandemic experts were hoping for is already over, and it is now nothing but grim news from today until a vaccine can be produced.
So we're in crisis mode, right now, and everything else will be placed on hold. The crisis will probably get far worse as well, as Republican tolerance for even token financial relief to workers shrivels up and unemployment soars again. The feeling of hopelessness is overwhelming.
What would a post-crisis national healthcare system look like? It cannot look like this. This version has proven to be a catastrophic failure, yet again. It is time for something more radical than the Affordable Care Act, something bold and national and, yes, market-ruining, and it had better happen soon.