Today, the Supreme Court is hearing arguments in a case seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act, and millions of Americans could lose their healthcare in the middle of a pandemic. “In a way, we’re committing mass suicide,” says science journalist Laurie Garrett, who says scrapping the landmark Obama-era healthcare law would leave people “to potentially carry disease forward into the community, into their workplaces, and so on, without any treatment, any help, any assistance. That’s just insane.”
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AMY GOODMAN: Finally, 10 seconds, Laurie. Today, the Supreme Court takes up the Affordable Care Act. Tens of millions of people, if they vote to eviscerate it, to take it down, could lose their healthcare in the midst of this pandemic. Your comment?
LAURIE GARRETT: Well, obviously, that would be dreadful, horrible, awful. And none of those people would have the financial wherewithal to turn to another source to get healthcare. This has implications not just for them, the individuals and their families, but for everybody they have contact with. And so, in a way, we’re committing mass suicide. This is an incredibly self-destructive thing for American people to do, to deny healthcare to millions of Americans in the middle of a pandemic and leave them on their own to potentially carry disease forward into the community, into their workplaces, and so on, without any treatment, any help, any assistance. That’s just insane.
AMY GOODMAN: Laurie Garrett, we want to thank you for being with us, Pulitzer Prize-winning science writer, former senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her new piece, we will link, in Foreign Policy, “The Vaccine News Is Good. Here’s the Bad News.”
When we come back, we look at the death of Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. He’s died of the coronavirus. Stay with us.
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AMY GOODMAN: “Thousand Finger Man” by Cándido. The legendary Cuban percussionist died Saturday at his home in the Bronx at the age of 99.
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