The government is so large and complex that you need someone who has a clear understanding of how it functions, how to get things done, and how to effectively manage it. The rap against the Carter Administration was that Carter was a Washington outsider and didn't have any relationships in Washington, to get his agenda passed.
This has certainly been true of the Trump Administration. Trump steadfastly refused to listen to the Washington insiders he initially hired and tried to do things his way in the first year of his administration, after which point he got rid of the Washington insiders, and has gone it alone, with increasingly disastrous results.
Republicans think that government can't, or shouldn't, do anything. So they layer on means testing, or additional layers of testing, regulation, and reporting so as to make any government program as expensive and unsuccessful as possible. Means testing, in particular, is ridiculously expensive. It is often cheaper, in terms of fraud or abuse, to make everyone eligible for the program, and to pay them the benefit, than it is to add means testing, investigation and prosecution for misuse.
I'm willing to bet that at the end of this pandemic, the USA votes for single payer, government funded healthcare, because your unconnected "for-profit" system is also in HUGE factor in what is unfolding. The Medical Industrial Complex has shown the dangers of a "for profit" healthcare system.
1. A healthy population is not a profitable population. There is no incentive for the system to practice "preventative medicine" as early diagnosis and treatment is far less profitable than dealing with people who are very sick;
2. Big Pharma has addicted millions of Americans, because as any drug dealer and Big Tobacco will tell you, an addict is the most reliable and profitable customer of all. There is an entire subset of the medical industry built around addiction and rehab in the USA. 28 days isn't the prescribed in-patient treatment period for addicts. There is no prescribed period. 28 days is the maximum period of in-patient treatment that American insurance companies will pay.
3. A larger population is a more profitable location. There are many areas of rural America where there are too few people, or they're too poor, to run a profitable hospital, and so they have very few doctors and no hospitals. What happens to these communities in this pandemic.
4. There is no co-ordination in your system during this pandemic. Every hospital corporation is doing something different with differing level of supplies. It's just a patchwork of services. Every state is doing something different.
I fear for my American family and friends.
