COVID-19 is like a wave crashing over us. Many countries absorbed that wave. We did not.

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Romelia Navarro weeps while hugging her husband, Antonio, in his final moments in a COVID-19 unit at St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton, Calif., on July 31. The U.S. death toll from the coronavirus topped 300,000 Monday. Jae C. Hong/Associated Press, File

The wave crashed down on us and broke us apart. Here, the COVID-19 wave smashing onto our shore split us up, fractured our health care system and revealed the weakness and rot of the hodgepodge system we currently have.

COVID-19 has killed 300,0000 Americans in nine months. This is more than the annual 250,000 combined deaths caused by lung cancer, breast cancer and colon cancer.

Why did this happen? The answer is the inability to have one universal, consistent health care system. The United States has a ragtag collection of systems with gaping holes. There is no health care system. There is no vision, no unity, no cohesion. Medicare for those 65 and above; Medicaid for the young and poor and those in nursing homes; private health insurance for those of us lucky to have an employer that can afford this, and, tragically, no insurance for nearly 30 million of us.

The time has come to have universal health care for everyone. We are dying, we are suffering and we need help. The time has come to come together as Americans and demand that we all are healed, that we are all cared for no matter how young, how poor, how unemployed or how homeless we are.

Together, we need to build a levee to keep this wave, and the next wave, from crashing down on us.

Thomas McInerney, M.D.
Cape Elizabeth

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