>This event forcing America to adopt more progressive policies

Most of the legislation is temporary heading into an election. I suspect the GOP would be happy to cut that net ASAP and sadly their own voters would support it.

I have some models as to how this changes the US electorate, based on the burn rate. Curious to see how right I am.

It feels like we're on the edge of a sea change... but it has seemed that way for decades.

History happens gradually, and then suddenly.

Time will tell. In a year, we'll actually have much better evidence about how different systems fared. Right now, both the market-based US system and the public systems in Europe are being put to the test.

I suspect that they will both have failures and successes that will largely be localized and that we'll find out that those features that made a healthcare system robust don't correlate that much with being a public system or a market system. It will probably correlate more strongly with culture.

All systems have capacity limits. This is even a compsci problem: queues. Whether your system is public, private, or a combination of both, under extreme demand that exceeds your workload capacity, you'll either be overwhelmed (and drop work) or apply back pressure (both which will appear as rationing of healthcare; you have no choice but to ration when supply is limited). There are only so many doctors, nurses, ICU beds, and ventilators.

Note that in Italy and Spain, reverse triage is being done based on your at risk status, age, and other complications. If you're young and healthy, you take priority. I imagine the same will be done in the US, and those who are more likely to survive will be provided with ventilators and other medical equipment to survive, not those who can pay or with insurance; medical practitioners are making the call, not the chargemaster and CFO.

Public healthcare systems won't need a bailout, they're already government supported. We'll move money around on the nation state balance sheet and move on. Private systems though may not survive. That's culture though, so perhaps you're right.

I totally understand that. And you'll probably come out the other side of this with a socialized healthcare system of some sort.

Fingers crossed.

Those policies have been maintained for decades in many European nations.

What policies are unmaintainable?

That's a really vague statement.

I think we're going to find that libertarian leaning countries fared far worse in this pandemic than authoritarian ones.

Honest question, as a libertarian, if you were president what would have been your response to this virus?