JAMA Health Forum
James N. Weinstein, William B. Weeks, Jonathan S. Skinner
In 1907, a financial collapse led to a major US national recession, a 17% decline in industrial output,1 and creation of the Federal Reserve system in 1913 to “provide a means by which periodic panics which shake the American Republic and do it enormous injury shall be stopped.”
The current COVID-19 pandemic shares many of the same causes as the Panic of 1907: lack of a coordinated federal response, lax state-level regulations, and absence of clear strategies to respond and recover from the initial outbreak. Therefore, we propose a new entity paralleling the Federal Reserve —the Federal Health Authority (FHA)—to anticipate health shocks, coordinate future responses, and address longer-term problems in the nation’s health and health care. Just as the Federal Reserve is tasked with sustainably maximizing the nation’s financial health, the FHA would be tasked with doing the same for the nation’s health.