Our healthcare system is broken, a fact nobody would have disputed in precovid days. Regulatory capture is a reality, and the pharmaceutical industry is fraught with examples. Yet we trusted private-public partnerships to find an optimal solution to a global pandemic, assuming a crisis would bring out the best in historically corrupt institutions.
In 2019, still settling into his new home in the state’s creepy, gothic governor’s mansion, Gavin Newsom told an Axios interviewer, “California is what America is going to look like.” Then, perhaps reflecting on his Hollywood benefactors, he added for emphasis, “California is America’s coming attraction.”
