Losing your job can often mean losing your health insurance. This is especially true for the millions of workers who lost their jobs in recent months. A new report from Families USA, a nonprofit healthcare consumers group, estimates that only one out of five unemployed workers, who now have low or moderate incomes, have private or military health coverage. According to the report only one fourth of middle-class and lower-income workers with annual incomes below 200% of the federal poverty level ($44,100 in annual income for a family of four) are receiving health coverage through public safety net programs such as MedicAid. These workers represent half of unemployed workers under the age of 65 and are the most economically vulnerable and have the highest risk of being uninsured.
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Tags: COBRA, Families USA, Health Insurance, healthcare, income, insurance, job loss, medicaid, unemployment
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Dr. Steven Chang, the author of DailyDose, is a staff physician with Kosmix RightHealth. Dr. Chang practices Family Medicine at the University of California Davis Medical Center, where his medical interests include both pediatric and geriatric care, public health, gay and lesbian health, and sleep medicine. Dr. Chang trained at the Stanford University affiliated O'Connor Hospital, and was a research fellow at the National Institute of Health. He holds an M.D. from McGill University and a BA in Public Health from Johns Hopkins University.
February 12th, 2009 at 8:52 am
The tight connection between AFFORDABLE health insurance and employment MUST be broken. But the underlying issue is that health insurance is NOT affordable. When you remove the portion of the total cost for health insurance that an employer pays in group health plans, you end up with COBRA, which is that absurd ‘backstop’ plan that permits people who lose their jobs to continue their current health plan–except that the ex-employee must pay the entire cost plus what amounts to a service fee.
What is absurd about this scheme, of course, is that just when you lost your job and your income, you have to pay double or triple or quadruple what you were paying for the health plan before you lost the job. A recipe for quick bankruptcy & destitution.
This happened to me several years ago, and when I lost my job, I decided to go with COBRA for awhile. My premium went from about $250 for family coverage to about $1,000, nearly twice what our mortgage payment was as the time!l I did that for a few months, drained too much money from our savings, and eventually dropped it when we had zero medical needs and costs in that period. A $12,000 annual drain on our savings was untenable and would have led us quickly to bankruptcy & destitution.
February 12th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
What is America without good health to enjoy. Yet the Government
wants to help the corporations and excutives that had many many
chances to do the right moral thing and I guess greed or whatever the ordinary working class in America are Not only losing
health care but their homes. These Americans need assistance now
and not a handout. It just turns my stomach to see these well
to do execs still seeking bailout They failed and they should give the reins to someone with some morals