The COVID-19 crisis is showing us our best and worst selves. All around the county, young people are getting groceries for older people, home sewers are making cloth masks for donation, and businesses are offering free services to help. But, we also see some businesses refusing to provide workers with masks, highly paid CEO’s refusing hazard pay to healthcare workers, and individuals hoarding supplies.

It has also made us realize that our own health is intimately connected to the health of everyone in our community. In the face of so many deaths all around us, we fear for our friends and neighbors and we mourn the deaths of people we perhaps didn’t know. We feel that loss as members of the human race. On a more practical level, we realize that we want to live in a healthy community. If the grocery clerk, or our favorite barista, or the delivery person has an untreated chronic disease, they’re less productive. If too many people get sick and can’t work, our economy suffers.

This is why we need a sensible health care program, like Medicare for All, that covers everyone. This is not socialism and it’s not “free” health care. It’s public health, built on the idea that we all have a stake in our community’s wellness. We’ve argued over this for decades. It’s time.