Free healthcare is better prepared to deal with pandemics

Viral propagation in a population is an exponential process. Relatively small changes in the number of people involved in the chain of propagation can have a very large effect on the speed at which it spreads. In a private healthcare system, access to vaccination and viral load tests is restricted to people who can afford them, leaving a significant part of the population as a vector of uncontrolled spread. On the contrary, in a health system where everyone potentially has free access to these resources, there is no such risk population group. Limited resources can be prioritized to people at risk of infection regardless of their income level, following medical rather than financial criteria. This increases the number of protected persons among those at risk of exposure to the disease and provides the authorities with greater control of infected persons for quarantine purposes. America is drastically behind other developed countries, who offer free, universal healthcare. There are not enough resources; hospital beds, medical equipment, etc. There is no equal access to healthcare as many Americans choose not to seek care, even for the direst of medical conditions.^[1] The government prioritizes the economy over the population's health, forcing many of these at-risk people out into the public where the virus can spread.^[2] Free, universal healthcare would mitigate this risk. With equal access to healthcare and adequate resources to handle pandemics, the number of at-risk carriers would dramatically decrease, ensuring our preparedness for pandemic outbreaks.

[P1] Private healthcare restricts access to care and leaves the poor unprotected. [P2] This significantly-sized poor population becomes a propagator of the pandemic, spreading it further and faster than if healthcare was free. [P3] Healthcare should be free for everyone to help contain the pandemic and prevent its spread.