Just making rounds today discussing this with the team(s) involved.
Long before the insurance companies are bankrupt (and, pro tip to GOP: they can’t survive in present form anyway) the first crisis will be: How many patients who do not need hospitalization will be isolated in hospitals for maximum containment before we go to isolation tents in warm weather locations?
Most hospitals don’t have seven days cash on hand. Right now, they are thinking of this as a minor annoyance, like getting a few more Medicaid patients.
Tell a hospital administrator that joint replacements and cardiac caths are going to be delayed, and watch shit get real.
The easiest target administratively to nationalize are the hospitals. The hardest nut to crack will be the “payers”, because they have spent the last twenty years taking control of the political process.
We are in for one hell of a ride.
If this becomes epidemic here, I predict bernie will win.
You just know Bernie and his fellow travelers are salivating at the opportunity a crashed healthcare system would afford them. Never let a crisis go to waste....
Then you have the AOC and the "OK Boomer" crowd, who think a virus than takes out huge numbers of older folks, while leaving millennials mostly unscathed, would be a great first step toward utopia.
There are many hospitals (like Hahnemann in Philly) across the country that have closed in recent years. I’m not sure on their present use- could any of them be stood up quickly..