Bill of Health - A worker gives directions as motorists wait in lines to get the coronavirus (COVID-19) vaccine in a parking lot at Dodger Stadium, Friday, Jan. 15, 2021, in Los Angeles, covid vaccine distribution

Countercyclical Aid Is Not Enough to Fix the Broken US Approach to Public Health Financing

By Philip Rocco

In the last month, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s failed responses to COVID-19, ranging from “testing to data to communications,” have prompted a call to reorganize the agency.

Yet restructuring the CDC will have little effect on pandemic preparedness if the decentralized American approach to health finance remains in place. This structure was already stripped bare by decades of state and local austerity even before the first cases of COVID-19 were identified, and has been further worn down since 2020.

If the pandemic has taught us anything about public policy, it is that the model of countercyclical federal aid — which expands at the onset of an economic crisis but abates as that crisis is resolved — is fundamentally inadequate when applied to the realm of public health.

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