The COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating when considering the loss of life and the catastrophic economic impact. Regardless of how the virus originated and regardless of prior viral-spread speculation, the fact remains that the world and specifically the United States were unprepared for the enormity of the crisis.

One of the main priorities of government should be public health. Yet local and federal public health agencies have been terribly underfunded for years and consequently were ill-prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic.

A recent poll in the U.S. confirms that Americans believe public health is vitally important. (here) Over 70 percent of those who answered a survey by the Harvard Opinion Research Program responded that an increase in public health spending was “very” or “extremely” important.

Why has public health funding not been a priority of government officials? The reality is that it has been crowded-out by health care entitlement spending for the past 50 years. State and federal budgets reflect an ever increasing amount of taxpayer dollars being spent on Medicaid, Medicare, and now Obamacare. (here)

Funding for public health has benefits for everyone in society, as we have seen from the COVID-19 crisis. Once established, an entitlement will only grow and demand more taxpayer money. And this is in the context of the political left trying to move the U.S. into a totally socialized health care system. As long as government officials want to expand entitlements in the U.S., public health will remain underfunded, to the detriment of the entire country.