COVID-19: urgent federal actions to accelerate America's response

COVID-19: urgent federal actions to accelerate America's response

Collection:
Health Policy and Services Research
Contributor(s):
Bipartisan Policy Center, issuing body.
Publication:
Washington, D.C. : Bipartisan Policy Center, January 2021
Language(s):
English
Format:
Text
Subject(s):
COVID-19 -- prevention & control
COVID-19 Testing
COVID-19 Vaccines -- supply & distribution
Healthcare Disparities
United States
Genre(s):
Technical Report
Abstract:
As it worsens, the COVID-19 pandemic is both revealing and creating extraordinary challenges to our nation's health care system and public health infrastructure. Since the beginning of the pandemic a year ago, there have been more than 24 million confirmed cases, and more than 400,000 deaths across the country, accounting for 25% of the confirmed cases and 20% of deaths worldwide. After heart disease and cancer, COVID-19 was the nation's third leading cause of death in 2020. Communities of color are being disproportionately impacted, accounting for 40% of deaths. While on average 3,000 people a day are losing their lives to COVID-19 and hospitalizations are high, the pandemic is also creating a substantial economic loss, with millions of Americans experiencing unemployment and food and housing insecurity. Given this backdrop, the Bipartisan Policy Center's Future of Health Care initiative reconvened in August 2020 and expanded its group of key health care leaders. Their mission: Develop recommendations that not only improve the resilience of America's health care and public health systems, but more urgently, address the threat of the coronavirus and the nation's response to it. As a first step, in October 2020, the Future of Health Care leaders urged Congress to pass a short-term relief package that would allocate additional funding and resources for COVID-19 testing and contact tracing, vaccine distribution and monitoring, school COVID-19 safety, housing and nutrition assistance, health care providers serving disproportionately vulnerable populations, and states burdened by the health and economic disruption caused by the pandemic. In late December 2020, Congress passed and President Trump signed into law a $900 billion bipartisan relief package that addressed many of these issues. The bill included significant federal funding for vaccine distribution; COVID-19 testing, contact tracing, and mitigation efforts; nutrition and rental assistance; and health care providers, as well as needed financial resources for small businesses, unemployed workers, and American families. In January 2021, President-elect Biden unveiled a $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan to further accelerate the nation's COVID-19 response and jumpstart the American economy. The plan includes $400 billion to launch a vaccination program, expand testing and contact tracing, create a public health jobs program to assist with the response, eliminate supply shortages, and assist schools with implementing COVID-19 safety protocols.1 One day after taking office, President Biden released the National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness, a comprehensive national plan to fight the current pandemic, and issued a series of executive actions to implement the response. These are important steps to help struggling Americans and gain control of coronavirus. BPC looks forward to working with the 117th Congress and the new administration to effectively implement the new law, achieve consensus on additional legislative action, and institute further actions necessary to save lives and reduce the transmission of the virus. In this report, BPC's health care leaders outline short-term recommendations for immediate execution to address the challenges of the current pandemic. The recommendations focus on six key issues: (1)Testing and contact tracing; (2) Vaccine transparency, equitable distribution, and uptake; (3) Surge capacity; (4) Supply chain management; (5) Racial disparities; (6) State, local, and provider funding.
Copyright:
The National Library of Medicine believes this item to be in the public domain. (More information)
Extent:
1 online resource (1 PDF file (42 pages))
NLM Unique ID:
101778557 (See catalog record)
Permanent Link:
http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101778557