Hospitals’ Poor Pandemic Preparations Cost Us All | Eastern NC Now

Vik Khanna argues in a Federalist column that we are all suffering now from hospitals‘ lack of preparation for a pandemic.

ENCNow
Publisher's note: The author of this post is Mitch Kokai for the John Locke Foundation.

    Vik Khanna argues in a Federalist column that we are all suffering now from hospitals' lack of preparation for a pandemic.

  • When the eventual COVID-19 post-mortem is conducted, the big culprit in the economic mayhem unleashed upon Americans is going to be the health-care industry, specifically hospitals.
  • When my wife and I attended a socially distanced evening happy hour at a neighbor's home, the conversation turned quickly to COVID-19. I criticized our county's heavy-handed response to the epidemic, and the hospital executive in the group solemnly intoned, "The shutdown saved the health-care industry ... we could not care for large numbers of people all at once." This person also went on to define a COVID-19 case as "any person who tests positive."
  • A person who tests positive for COVID-19 but is asymptomatic is no more a "case" than any one of the 80 million American adults harboring latent (frequently harmless) human papillomavirus constitutes a case of a sexually transmitted disease. But this executive knew his script by heart, and spoke his lines earnestly. On the walk home, my wife posited that hospitals owed their communities a financial debt because of how much everyone sacrificed to protect them from their lack of readiness for a pandemic that their own leaders have talked about for more than 20 years.
  • Indeed, the COVID-19 economic cataclysm has disproportionately affected hourly workers, small business owners, and low-skilled workers who cannot plug in, turn on, and Zoom in from home. If the Fed is right and the downturn erased 6.5 percent from the gross domestic product, then Americans - particularly people who cannot afford it - have sacrificed their jobs, their businesses, and even their life savings for a trillion-dollar industry that wastes 30 cents of every dollar it receives. ...
  • ... Thanks to President Obama, the hospital industry has never been richer. The profit margin at American acute care hospitals is 8 percent. ...

Go Back


Leave a Guest Comment

Your Name or Alias
Your Email Address ( your email address will not be published )
Enter Your Comment ( text only please )




NHRMC Agrees to Partnership With Novant Health, UNC Health John Locke Foundation Guest Editorial, Editorials, Op-Ed & Politics Cooper’s Hostility Over 2nd Amendment Continues to Grow


HbAD0

Latest Op-Ed & Politics

massive data collection by license plate readers on highways and streets threaten freedom
“I’m from America, 250 years ago we were way bigger than 6/1 dogs, and look at us thriving now.” Justin Gaethje pulls off an all time sports upset.
There are many people who overlook the brilliance of the US Constitution. They argue that it is outdated and unfit to adequately govern such a modern nation as ours in the 21st century.

HbAD1

"I plan to keep his counsel close until our paths cross again," JD Vance said on Thursday.

HbAD2

On Tuesday, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein signed an executive order creating the bipartisan Health Care Affordability Commission that he said will look at ways to make healthcare more affordable for North Carolinians.
"Margo’s Got Money Troubles" explores how financial desperation drives women to OnlyFans. That’s not empowering. It’s exploitative.

HbAD3

 
 
Back to Top