To focus on it at the exclusion of all other public health policy, though, is clearly a mistake. It’s learning the wrong lesson from the Covid pandemic. The insurance companies and for-profit medical system insist that this is the best system to provide people with the best healthcare, but during early days of the Covid pandemic, its limitations came into stark relief. In 2020, the American Public Health Association released a policy statement that began: “The COVID pandemic adds a new sense of urgency to establish a universal health care system in the United States. This remains true, as the Trump administration and the Republican-led Congress continue their assault of existing forms of federal healthcare spending.