Now that former President of the USA, Donald Trump
has been defeated and left office, a postmortem of his policies and actions has
started. He was criticized initially when he was in the office also for his awkward
health policies. His inadequate and delayed response to the coronavirus
pandemic was also heavily rebuked. A new Lancet Commission report has stated
that 40% of the deaths due to COVID-19 could have been prevented had Donald
Trump promptly acted in the right manner. The complete details here!
Lancet Commission report 2021
The new Lancet Commission report is out and it has
stated that around 40% of the deaths due to coronavirus could have been
averted. The Lancet Commission on
Public Policy and Health in the Trump Era has put Donald’s response to
the crisis as inept and insufficient. But the report also states that the roots
of the country’s poor health outcomes run deep.
Commission co-chairs
Dr. Steffie Woolhandler and Dr. David Himmelstein are professors at the
City University of New York's Hunter College. They have been advocating
a single-payer health system such as "Medicare for All”. They state that
the nation has severe health disparities and these are the result of decades of
improper health, economic, and social policies.
The observations of the
Lancet Commission
The Commission had taken
details and data of multiple health parameters of the country. They realized that
the life expectancy of people in the USA has been far below that of other industrialized
nations and this trailing started around 40 years back. In 2018, 461000 more
Americans died compared to the other advanced nations such as Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan and the United Kingdom. David said:
“The overriding thing
that we need to do in our country is to decrease the huge and widening
inequalities that have emerged in our nation,”
COVID-19 and the
related observations |
| Lancet Commission report on Covid-19 RESPONSE IN THE USA [Source: Pinterest] |
If we take the last
year of 2020, it was the year of the pandemic and it has been noticed that far
more Blacks died compared to the Whites in the USA. 50% more people of color
expired due to COVID-19 and this was due to the health care inequalities that
cropped up for a long time and came to the forefront now in a huge form. In
the people of color, deaths were predominantly more in the middle-age group
adults since they resided in crowded dwellings and their jobs did not allow
them to practice social distancing at all times.
As regards the Trump
era, the report states that face masks and social distancing could have
definitely helped cut down the deaths, but Donald Trump did not enforce it.
These were crucial decisions that he left on the states to decided and
implement. There was a lack of coordination at a higher level. Hence people
did not take it seriously and that led to more afflictions and deaths.
Donald Trump also
weakened the Affordable Care Act and hence 2.3 million more Americans
were left uninsured. Some more lost employer-covered insurance due to the
pandemic. It all started in 1980 with Ronald Reagan when social programs got
eroded with his neoliberal policies. Bill Clinton’s faulty welfare policies furthered
worsened the problem. Even Barack Obama’s policies had hampered the health care
system.
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A long list of
remedial measures have been suggested so that the health care of the Americans
is brought back on track. Steffie said:
“We’re still in a
very deep hole. We have 30 million uninsured people. We have tens of millions
of more who are underinsured. The thing that would be best for the health of
the population would be Medicare for All.”
They also suggested Green
New Deal, criminal justice reforms, repealing of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and increased
funding for social programs.
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