Destroy Healthcare to Save It?

Weeks ago, medical experts and politicians warned that our hospitals would be overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. Cities and states across the country turned convention centers and other venues into makeshift hospitals, while the hospitals themselves banned “elective” surgeries in order to prepare for the overflow.

What happened?

Many hospitals are now empty and have been forced to lay off workers. The 500-bed U.S. Navy ship Comfort that New York City so desperately needed is about to head out to sea, never having been nearly so needed as anticipated. Field hospitals erected at great cost are closing without ever having treated a patient. As The Daily Wire reports, that’s because “forecasts [in New York City, for example,] predicted that 110,000 beds would be necessary. At the height of the outbreak, 18,825 beds, less than 20% of the predicted number, were needed.”

Don’t get us wrong: We’re glad that our hospitals were never pushed to the brink except for some “hot spots.” But these same facilities now face a crisis that may have been even worse than the virus. As President Donald Trump repeatedly states, “The cure can’t be worse than the problem itself.”

Well, it just might be. But our government’s intentions were good.

“One reason that we didn’t want hospitals to get overrun by COVID-19 patients is that we’d crowd out everyone else needing care,” National Review editor Rich Lowry writes, “but we’ve ended up crowding out many people needing care as a deliberate choice — even where COVID-19 surges haven’t happened and probably never will.”

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