If anyone had any doubts about how catastrophic our for-profit health-care system is, the past few weeks should set those doubts to rest. Unfortunately, many pundits, and even the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, are still arguing that a single-payer health-care system would not improve our current circumstances, pointing to Italy’s situation as evidence that Medicare for All would not help during a pandemic — and might even result in worse outcomes.

This argument is absurd, of course. A single-payer system like Medicare for All is much better equipped to deal with exactly this sort of public health emergency, including in Italy, than the United States’ fragmented for-profit system. And the vision of a single-payer health-care system could not only help us guide our approach to the current crisis, but also leave us better prepared for the next one.

For an example of what a single-payer response to coronavirus could look like, we need look no farther than the United States’ northern neighbor. Politically, Canada shares much in common with the United States: an embrace of neoliberalism and free trade deals, the support of interventionist wars, centuries of unaddressed colonialism, and prioritizing the needs of fossil fuel companies over the planet’s. One stark difference between the two countries, though, is that Canada has a (mostly) single-payer health-care system.