SAN FRANCISCO - More than 330,000 Americans could have been saved during the COVID-19 pandemic if the United States operated under a universal health care system, the Kaiser Health News (KHN) reported recently.

Universal health care would have helped address underlying and pre-existing conditions that contributed to the COVID-related deaths, ultimately saving over 338,000 lives between the start of the pandemic and mid-March 2022, the KHN reported, citing a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

It is nearly one-third of the total COVID-related deaths, said KHN.