Anne Case and Angus Deaton, a wife-and-husband team of renowned economists, believe that it’s only special interests that have kept the U.S. from having a better health-care system but that the current crisis may break their power. They write in the New York Times,

[P]ublic anger has been building — over drug prices, co-payments, surprise medical bills — and now, over the fragility of our health care system, which has been laid bare by the pandemic. This anger could breach the protective cordon in Washington. . . .

They want a system with better cost control, and especially with lower payments to hospitals and doctors. Some of their ideas might even make sense: I’d like to see limits on surprise billing, and an increase in the number of people allowed to practice medicine. But the notion that we’re going to get through this epidemic with greater political support for pay cuts for the medical industry strikes me as otherworldly.

James Capretta seems much closer to the mark here:

Medicare rate-setting is central to the design of public option proposals, such as the one advanced by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Instead of creating a new basis for paying hospitals and physicians, public option plans simply reference the fee schedules established by Medicare. Doing so allows proponents to claim that these plans are much less expensive on a per-person basis than commercial insurance. Pre-pandemic, that was a selling point. Now, however, with medical readiness on everyone’s mind, further cuts for hospitals and doctors may not seem like such a good idea.