The White House coronavirus response coordinator said Monday that she is "very worried about every city in the United States" and projects 100,000 to 200,000 American deaths as a best case scenario.

As hospitals in California and across the country struggle with a surge of coronavirus infection patients, a second crisis is brewing in physicians’ offices, threatening to push the nation’s healthcare system further to the brink.

In the Chinese city of Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, doctors made life-or-death decisions last month when 1,000 people needed ventilators to support their breathing, but only 600 were available.

The international response to the novel coronavirus has laid this bare: America was less prepared for a pandemic than countries with universal health systems. There is a real concern that Americans, with a high uninsured rate and high out-of-pocket costs compared to the rest of the world, won’t seek care because of the costs.