Lessons we can learn from pandemic
What will we learn from the pandemic to make our country stronger and our world a better place? Topping the list must be health care.
About 14% of working-age Americans have no health insurance at all. With joblessness rising, that number is now higher. Many who have insurance have high-deductible plans that provide a strong incentive to avoid doctor or ER visits.
For this epidemic, we have ensured that no one must worry about the cost of testing or treatment for COVID-19. This was done because we can't monitor or stop the spread of a virus if large segments of the population are excluded simply because they can't afford to see a doctor.
Our current health insurance system that ignores much of our population was and is wholly inadequate in the face of an epidemic.
I hope we realize this lesson and enact a form of universal healthcare. While we experience the staggering costs of the current crisis, we can be developing a plan to prevent and manage future outbreaks.
The next lesson I hope we learn is just how important science is when facing a crisis. Meaningful action against the virus is not possible without the work of expert scientists and doctors. Opinions, biases and misinformation only serve to blunt our response to the pandemic.
Right now, experts are telling us to wake up and urgently address climate change. The effects of our warming planet are becoming visible to us all with increasing pollution, heat, fires, floods and extreme weather. It's time to listen to the climate experts.
Addressing climate change can result in better air quality, plentiful clean energy jobs and improved health for all.
Continuing to ignore climate change could result in social, economic and human costs on the same scale as the pandemic.
Thomas Rausch
Glen Ellyn