Excellent article. I'd also note that there is very robust evidence that expanding health coverage via public programs has a significant poverty-reducing effect. For example, a 2019 paper in the American Journal of Public Health found that food insecurity fell after the ACA’s Medicaid expansion, suggesting that “health insurance provision has spillover effects that reduce other dimensions of poverty.”

Similarly, a 2019 paper in Health Affairs found that “Medicaid expansion caused a significant reduction in the poverty rate.” Interestingly, Medicaid’s antipoverty impact “grew over the past decade independent of expansion, by shielding beneficiaries from growing out-of-pocket spending.” From all of this, it seems clear that if we were to achieve universal coverage, it would have an even more potent poverty-fighting effect.