What has long been speculated by the Left is now a quantifiable fact: the United States’ privatized and patchwork system of health insurance — which leaves millions uninsured or underinsured — has directly resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths during the pandemic. According to a new report, a shocking 338,000 of the United States’ one million reported COVID deaths could have been avoided if we had a Medicare for All system.

The study, published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS), lists a few key reasons for the lower death rate under Medicare for All, including reduced transmission, higher vaccination rates, and more hospital capacity.

For starters, researchers found that Medicare for All would have lowered the level of COVID comorbidities such as hypertension, obesity, and diabetes. All these underlying conditions are less prevalent among insured people, whose access to care makes them more likely to be aware of their conditions and more likely to have them under control.