Toward a ‘New Normal’ in Post-Covid U.S. Health Care

The COVID-19 pandemic has unmasked chronic shortcomings of the U. S. health care system that have exacerbated the challenging situation the nation faces in trying to recover from the most severe pandemic in more than a hundred years.

The pandemic became a triple crisis—the pandemic itself, the resultant economic downturn, and underlying systemic racism. This crisis calls for reflection on how these long-term problems can be dealt with in order to move past recovery to an improved system. Pressing issues must be addressed involving medicine, public health, and health policy.

A new day exists with the recent 2020 elections that returned Democrats to the White House together with a majority in the House and possibly a 50-50 split in the Senate depending on the outcome of the two January Senate runoffs in Georgia.