What will be after COVID 19

My Muftic Forum Blog column for the week. What will be after COVID-19?
The cracks in our health and employment systems have been exposed as never before. with so many left behind..and more will see it is in their own self-interest to make changes. I have found my own views already shifting in the middle of the crisis. We will emerge as a different country and world. Isolationism will die a slow death as we realize how interconnected we are and individuals and nations will understand that no one can be an island unto themselves. We will become far more reliant on the internet for social, business intercourse because we have learned how effective and efficient it is. I have less hope that we will become more empathetic, but when it comes to class, race, and gender, we will have a greater understanding that some things know no boundaries or borders and that it is in our own self-interest to care about others because we ourselves could become affected. We may also realize that the US is not the best country in the world and that we have become less and not greater thanks to the incompetent and self-absorbed president leading us. The role of government as maintaining strategic reserves will be more valued. Both socialism and capitalism failed worldwide because keeping reserves is expensive and it is a gamble that it will ever be needed. but more will see its value and support it.
If anything, the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the seams of our inadequate health care system. Just wait until the bills for hospitalization come due (only tests were freebees) and the bankruptcies start for those not adequately covered by Obamacare, private, or employer insurance. Estimates for the cost per treatment for the uninsured could be at least $30,000 to $75,000 or more per CNBC and expert Wendell Potter. There will be those who have been left out entirely because of their making too much money to get Medicaid but not enough to afford even Obamacare premiums and deductions, particularly in those red states which did not expand Medicaid. At the same time, Trump continues to back court action to yank Obamacare from twenty million, in the midst of a pandemic, no less. On the other hand, the bailout to save the economy is costing nearly 4 trillion dollars including proposals in the pipeline, bringing the US government debt held by the public close to 94% of GDP, assuming the economy does not shrink in a recession and rescue loans will not be paid back. Post World War II was the last time we were in such bad shape. This issue will dominate November 2020 and will combine with finger-pointing at Trump's failed leadership. Recent polls show a "seismic" change in public attitude, with the belief the danger will last "for years". That toxic combination of Trump's leadership shortcomings and GOP health policy failures should provide the impetus for major reforms in our health insurance system. Biden's plan may not be exactly the kind of Medicare for All Bernie Sanders proposed. However, any room for more debt Sander's plan would cause has largely been eaten up and diverted to the COVID-19 bailouts Biden's more economical plan will have a decent shot at carrying the day so long as Biden is elected in November. If Biden loses, imagine where that will leave us. For four years, Trump will have promised a replacement for Obamacare, a great and better one. Still, he has not presented one. Perhaps now more will wise up that he has only empty promises and will not be taken for fools anymore.
Biden's plan was offered this week. https://www.yahoo.com/news/biden-adopts-parts-sanders-policies-195350178.html
From the article; "Biden said he now favors dropping the Medicare eligibility age by five years, to age 60, a step toward the Vermont senator's marquee single-payer plan, "Medicare for All." The campaign describes this as an effort to present older Americans who are working and not yet at retirement age to have the benefits of the popular government program. The campaign says the additional costs would "be financed out of general revenues to protect the Medicare Trust Fund."
Biden's plan still leaves some major issues unaddressed. That states were required to expand Medicaid was already declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, The Trump administration found a way to remove the requirement for individuals to participate in Obamacare. or have health insurance and they permitted expensive junk insurance to be sold which was devoid of many essential benefits. The result was to leave the pool of insured by Obamacare with more sick and fewer healthy ones, a basic risk-sharing insurance principle needed to keep Obamacare on a healthy footing. There may be a way to satisfy even this Trump dominated court with some revisions to the original law, but that one is for the clever pen of legislative drafting to find some other alternative ways around the Court's precedence. The cost of big pharma drugs must be brought down and drug companies must be required to compete for government-financed program formularies.
The tax policies of the US in the past and boosted greatly by the tax cuts to the wealthy engineered by the Trump administration have also left us with some of the greatest income disparities in the world. Will Biden tackle this problem? Do enough of us really care? The rich have gotten richer, the GDP never grew large enough to offset the debt it caused, and money to the middle class was a drip, not a trickle. The good news we are still ranked better than Mexico, Brazil, and China. The bad news is that we are near the bottom of the world in income disparity, worse than such countries as Ukraine, Egypt. Moldova, Kazakhstan, Chad, Niger, and Venezuela.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/countries/gini-coefficient-by-country/#dataTable

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/01/covid-19-hospital-bills-could-cost-uninsured-americans-up-to-75000.html

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/27/coronavirus-pandemic-americans-health-insurance

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/11/politics/america-cant-beat-coronavirus/index.html

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-plows-forward-on-plans-to-kill-obamacare-coronavirus-pandemic-be-damned?ref=home&fbclid=IwA

https://www.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-four-devastating-weeks-americans-100036290.html