David Dayen in his daily unsanitized newsletter on the state of American health care...
This is where the virus is headed, into areas that are utterly unprepared for a crisis of this nature. That’s because America remains a place where your medical care is a function of your socio-economic status. This essential inhumanity should have been remedied long ago, but the crisis makes it impossible to look away. We have the greatest health system in the world if you can afford it.
That’s a moral crime. Single-payer supporters are often derided as “unrealistic,” but it’s actually unrealistic to expect that Americans will blandly accept their bank accounts being a factor in their mortality. This must change.
33%
That’s the percentage of small businesses in New York City that could close up shop due to the pandemic, according to the Partnership for New York City.
It’s in many ways not surprising that a small business program that provided eight weeks of payroll didn’t last in a crisis well into its fifth month, and by “in many ways” I mean in every way. This is another example of the temporary benefits of the CARES Act, set against the effectively permanent bailout authority for large corporations.
More from David Dayen...
Days Without a Bailout Oversight Chair
130. Although maybe the chair is superfluous. The Congressional Oversight Commission is actually holding a hearing on Friday about the Main Street Lending Program. Maybe it will cover how the Fed changed the program to support the oil and gas industry. The hearing should stream at its new website, coc.senate.gov, which is sadly… not operative yet.