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Even Before the Pandemic, 1 Million Americans Lost Health Insurance Last Year As Republicans Attacked ACA

A new U.S. Census Bureau report featured in the Washington Post today reveals that one million Americans lost health insurance in 2019 — and that number has increased by millions during the pandemic. The Health 202 points to “repeated attempts by President Trump and Republicans to undermine” the Affordable Care Act as a key driver of the rise in uninsured Americans as “the new data signifies that the first three years of President Trump’s tenure were a period of contracting health insurance coverage.”

Despite the millions of Americans out of work and uninsured through no fault of their own, Senate Republicans are still enabling the toxic GOP lawsuit to strike down the entire health care law, which would eliminate protections for people with pre-existing conditions and kick an estimated 20 million Americans off their health insurance. Senate Republicans still have “no plan” if the increasingly popular health care law is struck down, but are desperately trying to rewrite their toxic records in false and misleading campaign ads as health care remains a massive “political liability” for the GOP that “could help determine control of the Senate.”

Washington Post: Analysis | The Health 202: One million Americans lost health insurance last year

By Paige Winfield Cunningham

September 16, 2020

Key Points:

  • Americans became wealthier and more held jobs last year. Yet at the very same time, one million people lost health insurance. And that number has steadily climbed this year under the pandemic.
  • A U.S. Census Bureau report released yesterday showed a continued slow erosion of the nation’s insured rate in 2019. The decline of coverage illustrates both the shortcomings of President Barack Obama’s 2010 health-care law and repeated attempts by President Trump and Republicans to undermine it.
  • “Though the reasons are sharply debated, the new data signifies that the first three years of President Trump’s tenure were a period of contracting health insurance coverage,” Amy Goldstein writes. “The decreases reversed gains that began near the end of the Great Recession and accelerated during early years of expanded access to health plans and Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act.”
  • The uninsured rate rose to 29.6 million people, totaling 9.2 percent of the population. It has slowly ticked upward since 2016, when 28.1 million people didn’t have a health plan. Between 2018 and 2019, the share of people without coverage increased in 19 states and decreased in just one.
  • Medicaid enrollment fell from 17.9 percent of Americans to 17.2 percent.
  • One reason for the decline is positive: As poverty rates fell for all major racial and ethnic groups, more people earned too much to qualify for the program. The poverty rate fell to 18.8 percent for Blacks, 15.7 percent for Hispanics and 9.1 percent for Whites.
  • But other factors were also at play. People no longer face a tax penalty for being uninsured, after Congress repealed it in 2017. Several GOP-led states expanded enrollment requirements. And wide disparities persisted in how states run their programs.
  • The Economic Policy Institute has estimated that 12 million people have lost health insurance received through their workplace or that of a family member. Some of those have been able to enroll in Medicaid — its rolls have risen by about 4 million during the pandemic — but others find it unaffordable.

Read the full story here.

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