It's truly shocking and disgraceful.
A country with the resources that we have
should not be in this state.
And I think above all else, the single factor
that's leading to this
is the lack of federal coordination and leadership.
The fact that there is no steadying, unifying
hand coming from the White House means that
the country is forced to fight this pandemic
as a bunch of disconnected states, and the
response has therefore been weaker than the
sum of its parts.
That is why we are in the situation where
entirely predictable patterns are emerging.
The fact that we are in a globalized, urbanized
world shouldn't be an excuse for America to
look past its failings during this crisis.
On top of those things that a lot of other
country share,
we add a strange healthcare system 
that ties health to unemployment.
We add a long legacy of racial discrimination,
which means that now Black and Brown and 
Indigenous people are suffering disproportionately.
They're getting infected and dying 
from coronavirus far more than other people.
We add a specific disinvestment in public
health that is not universal, that is very
much an American phenomenon 
that we have become complacent.
We have reduced the money that goes into the
people who stop us from getting sick
in the first place in favor of treating 
people who are already sick.
The combined burden of all of these choices
left to fester and rot for decades
is coming to fruition now.
Now we're seeing the impact of all these things
that people have talked about and could have
been prevented and are making the pandemic
so much worse.
Do you think if we had Medicare for All, a
national healthcare system,
that it would have dealt with the system much better
and working against this 
patchwork approach in this country, Ed?
Yes.
I think it's very clear that that is the case.
It's not going to be a panacea, it's not going
to be the single thing that fixes everything.
The problem with the pandemic is the U.S.
has floundered on multiple different fronts.
Healthcare access is certainly one of them.
There was a thing called the Global Health
Security Index which ranked different nations
according to their preparedness.
The U.S. ranked #1 — which now in hindsight
seems a bit dubious.
But even then, in terms of healthcare access,
it ranked 175th out of 195 countries, one
of the worst in the world.
So, do I think that universal healthcare would
have made a difference?
Absolutely, as would other social policies
— paid sick leave, hazard pay, things that
would allow people the agency and power to
take their health into their own hands
stop themselves from getting infected in the way
that we know poor and disadvantaged people currently are.
