How Covid Crashed the System: A Guide to Fixing American Health Care

Why America’s health care system failed so tragically during the Covid pandemic, and how the forces unleashed by the crisis could be just the medicine for its long-term cure.

Covid patients overwhelmed American hospitals. The world’s most advanced and expensive health care system crumbled, short of supplies and personnel. The U.S. lost more patients than any other nation during the pandemic. How could this happen? And how could this disaster lead to a more resilient, rational and equitable health care system in the future?

How Covid Crashed the System answers these questions with compelling stories and wide-angle analysis. Dr. David Nash, a founder of the discipline of population health, and Charles Wohlforth, an award-winning science writer, pick up the pieces of the Covid disaster like investigators of a crashed airliner, finding the root causes of America’s failure to cope, and delivering surprising answers that may reorient how you think about your own health.

From the broadest, cultural flaws that disabled our health system to particular, institutional issues, America’s defenses fell due to racism and poverty, combined with a culture of misguided individualism that tore communities apart. We suffered from failed leadership and crippled public health agencies, and hospitals built to make money from services, not deliver health.

But How Covid Crashed the System goes beyond analyzing those problems, providing hope for change and fundamental improvement in ways that will transform Americans’ health. Covid’s market disruption encouraged new technology that allows for remote health care. Integrated health organizations gained ground, working to manage clients’ total wellness from cradle to grave. Covid also accelerated changes in medical education, to make doctor training more equitable and better aligned to the skills we need. And Covid forced employers to accept responsibility for their workers’ health in a new way, making them partners in this new movement.

Using systemic analysis of the Covid crash, the authors find reasons to hope. America’s health care establishment resisted reform for decades, mired in waste and avoidable errors. Now, the pandemic crisis has exposed its flaws for all to see, creating the opportunities for systemic changes. Even without new laws or government policies, America is moving toward a transformed health system responsible for our wellness. How Covid Crashed the System tells that story.

David B. Nash, MD, MBA, is the Founding Dean Emeritus of the Jefferson College of Population Health and the Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor of Health Policy, on the campus of Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. Dr. Nash has been on the Faculty at Jefferson for 32 years. He is a nationally acclaimed expert in quality and safety of medical care, health reform, the Covid 19 pandemic and medical education. He resides in suburban Philadelphia.

Charles Wohlforth is the award-winning author of more than ten books and numerous articles and columns, former elected official, and non-profit leader. His books include work about science, technology and the environment, politics and history, travel, and as-told-to biography. He has won the L.A. Times Book Prize for science and technology and the Best of the West award for the best newspaper columnist in the western U.S. He lives in central New Jersey and spends summers at a remote coastal site in Alaska.