I feel like you're trying to draw a glib comparison to affirmative action. Shame on you if so - we're talking about people dying needlessly. It's not okay to blame behaviour in either case. This is a systemic issue brought about by the politicisation of science and a lack of robust, independent media.

I think they could be trying to draw a parallel between many lifestyle choices that result in adverse health outcomes - obesity, high risk sexual behaviour, extreme sports etc.

The parallel is to all outcomes, not just health.

> What can we do to address this discriminatory disparity and increase equity in medicine?

The paper goes into it, just vaccinate everybody.

We did? I mean it was offered to everyone... Unless you're talking about mandatory vaccination?

I was being as flippant as i interpreted OP to be. I dont think there is a significant disparity in medical care between R and D. Vaccines were available to all, after that its personal responsibility, you cant cry that your group is dying from something that you refuse to get a vaccine for.

How about first achieve national consensus that national healthcare should even be a priority? Anyways, in this case, many in the GOP are convinced that the vaccine is worse than the disease. The problem is information and not vaccine availability.

as long as it isn’t a hand out to insurance companies

sadly any compromise bill just results in the wrong bill

no public option, which was scrapped from Obamacare (to get it passed into law at all), means no super negotiator with insurers

no medicare ability to negotiate, means no super negotiator with insurers

these nuances don't have national consensus, amongst people that are open to national healthcare

This can also be blamed on the rightwing corpses.

In this case the vaccine & the ICU stays were paid for by taxpayers. If anything they got special treatment that was way above & beyond what others complain about when it comes to the lack of equal access to medical resources.

> It's sad to see how the medical system fails Republicans.

It has nothing to do with politics.

Excess deaths was because the medical infrastructure was overwhelmed. So ICU services were not available as normal.

From report:

> Overall, our results suggest that political party affiliation only became a substantial risk factor in Ohio and Florida after vaccines were widely available. > ... > Lack of individual-level vaccination status limits our ability to draw broad conclusions, but the results suggest that the well-documented differences in vaccination attitudes and reported uptake between Republicans and Democrats [10, 7, 8, 13] have already had serious consequences for the severity and trajectory of the pandemic in the United States.

> It has nothing to do with politics.

> Excess deaths was because the medical infrastructure was overwhelmed. So ICU services were not available as normal.

I'm a bit confused how you come to this conclusion when the section you quote from the report says the lack of vaccination uptake is to blame along party lines.

overwhelmed medical infrastructure would hit both political parties equally. Unless you're suggesting that democrats in Florida have access to democrat-only-hospitals...

You need a good guy with a vaccine to take down a bad guy with a disease.

God has blessed his chosen ones.

There are clearly a number of structural and cultural factors at play which are hard to address easily.

But also yes, some of this poetic justice.

What about having more patrolling republican dominated areas checking whether people properly wear masks and making vaccines mandatory with punishment for those who refuse them?

Would the voters in Republican-dominated areas stand for that?

Obviously not. As far as they are concerned, covid is made up problem liberals lie about.

In a word: Nope.

Live free or die (from covid-19).