Health experts slam U.S. for inadequacies, inequities of COVID-19 response: NYT

NEW YORK, June 23 (Xinhua) -- A bipartisan panel of health experts has planned to call for an overhaul of the American public health system that would greatly expand the role of the federal government, giving Washington the authority to set minimum health standards and coordinate a patchwork of nearly 3,000 state, local and tribal agencies, reported The New York Times (NYT) on Tuesday.

The recommendations flow from what the panel, the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a National Public Health System, described as the inadequacies and inequities of the United States' response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 1 million Americans, according to the report.

In its report, the panel cited "archaic approaches to aggregating data" as one reason so many Americans have died. It called on Congress to give the Department of Health and Human Services authority to establish and enforce standards for data collection.

The panel also wanted to address the failures of the nation's public health agencies to protect Americans from other health risks, including drug overdoses, diabetes and maternal mortality.

"While other countries have centralized public health authorities, public health in the United States is largely managed at the state and local level. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the federal public health agency, does not have the authority to compel states to act - it cannot, for example, investigate outbreaks of infectious disease in a particular state unless it has an invitation from state officials to do so," said the report.

State health agencies and the CDC have a long history of working collaboratively, but throughout the pandemic, elected state officials, particularly those in red states, have been reluctant to cede control. When the CDC asked states to sign agreements to share vaccination data with the federal government, for example, a number of states balked, it added.