Universal healthcare as pandemic preparedness: The lives and costs that could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The fragmented and inefficient healthcare system in the United States leads to many preventable deaths and unnecessary costs every year. During a pandemic, the lives saved and economic benefits of a single-payer universal healthcare system relative to the status quo would be even greater. For Americans who are uninsured and underinsured, financial barriers to COVID-19 care delayed diagnosis and exacerbated transmission. Concurrently, deaths beyond COVID-19 accrued from the background rate of uninsurance. Universal healthcare would alleviate the mortality caused by the confluence of these factors. To evaluate the repercussions of incomplete insurance coverage in 2020, we calculated the elevated mortality attributable to the loss of employer-sponsored insurance and to background rates of uninsurance, summing with the increased COVID-19 mortality due to low insurance coverage. Incorporating the demography of the uninsured with age-specific COVID-19 and nonpandemic mortality, we estimated that a single-payer universal healthcare system would have saved about 212,000 lives in 2020 alone. We also calculated that US$105.6 billion of medical expenses associated with COVID-19 hospitalization could have been averted by a single-payer universal healthcare system over the course of the pandemic. These economic benefits are in addition to US$438 billion expected to be saved by single-payer universal healthcare during a nonpandemic year.

Evaluation of the US Definitions for Coronavirus Disease 2019 Community Risk Levels.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) defines a county metric of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) community levels to inform public health measures. We find that the COVID-19 community levels vary frequently over time, which may not be optimal for decision making. Alternative metric formulations that do not compromise predictive ability are shown to reduce variability.

Effectiveness of UNAIDS targets and HIV vaccination across 127 countries.

The HIV pandemic continues to impose enormous morbidity, mortality, and economic burdens across the globe. Simultaneously, innovations in antiretroviral therapy, diagnostic approaches, and vaccine development are providing novel tools for treatment-as-prevention and prophylaxis. We developed a mathematical model to evaluate the added benefit of an HIV vaccine in the context of goals to increase rates of diagnosis, treatment, and viral suppression in 127 countries. Under status quo interventions, we predict a median of 49 million [first and third quartiles 44M, 58M] incident cases globally from 2015 to 2035. Achieving the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS 95-95-95 target was estimated to avert 25 million [20M, 33M] of these new infections, and an additional 6.3 million [4.8M, 8.7M] reduction was projected with the 2020 introduction of a 50%-efficacy vaccine gradually scaled up to 70% coverage. This added benefit of prevention through vaccination motivates imminent and ongoing clinical trials of viable candidates to realize the goal of HIV control.