America's health care system is what's creating wide disparities in the outcomes of COVID-19 infections. The virus hits everybody the same way -- so if everybody had great health care, all their lives, the differences in misery and death wouldn't be showing up.

Because we don't all have great health care -- many have none at all -- the differences are stark Here's a refresher from Progressive Breakfast summarizing what we learned at last week's statewide Marylanders United virtual meeting on health care.

How much more can we learn TODAY (Thursday, May 28) at our 5:30 meeting on the June 2 election and the importance of electing Strong Schools advocates in Maryland. Sign up here to join the conversation, take action, have impact! And thanks to folks who stuck with us through some tech trauma; we had a fine discussion of how to keep the state's schools strong.

COVID-19 Does Not Discriminate; Our Health Care Does

The coronavirus pandemic is hitting communities of color hard. From alarming death rates for Black, Latinx and Indigenous people to the fact that women of color make up an astonishing percentage of the essential workers putting their health on the line, we may all be facing this virus together, but we are not all at equal risk. And the coronavirus pandemic is exposing a long-standing truth: people of color face deadly health disparities in the U.S. Enduring structural factors such as long term pollution exposure, living in communities with less hospital beds, the inability to afford health coverage, high rates of chronic illnesses and high maternal mortality rates have contributed to worse health outcomes for people of color in nearly every measurable way. We can’t just let our broken healthcare system return to “normal.” The old “normal” left millions of our families struggling to survive, let alone thrive. Senator Bernie Sanders and Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal end this discrimination in their new bill -- the Health Care Emergency Guarantee Act. This emergency legislation covers immediate no-cost healthcare for all medically necessary health services for everyone, including undocumented immigrants for the duration of the pandemic. This bill must be signed into law to save lives and we must continue the fight to guarantee health coverage for all through Medicare for All. Now is the time to rewrite the rules and unrig our system so that it works for everyone, no matter where we were born, how we look, or how much money we make.

Alan Barber, Hebah Kassem, Sanjeev K. Sriram MD in Progressive Breakfast from People's Action -- Thursday May 28