Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the American political landscape, influencing the course of the 2020 election and creating an urgent policy priority for the new administration. The Biden-Harris plan for beating COVID-19 represents a practicable, technically competent plan to contain the pandemic, one that will serve the country well in the months ahead. The authors suggest that the United States would also benefit from an even bolder set of aspirations—reframing the national conversation on COVID-19, embedding equity in all health decision making, strengthening the social safety net, and changing how we talk about health—as part of the national response to COVID-19. This would represent a genuine step forward in the US approach to health, informed by the systemic flaws COVID-19 exposed, and would realize benefits from the pandemic moment that in turn would propel national health forward for the rest of the century.
