Republicans Keep Insurance Markets Closed Even as Millions of Americans Lose Coverage Amid Public Health and Economic Crisis [Washington Post]

Senate Republicans Do Nothing To Stop Trump From Making It Harder for Americans to Obtain Health Coverage as Unemployment Claims Skyrocket

Despite the fact that over 22 million Americans have filed unemployment insurance claims and millions of Americans are losing health care coverage, vulnerable Senate Republicans have yet to hold the Trump administration responsible for their harmful decision to keep special enrollment in the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace closed.

By keeping insurance markets closed, Republicans are making it harder for newly unemployed and uninsured Americans to regain health care coverage. The GOP’s decision to leave millions of Americans uninsured is not only wrong, it’s a “political loser”: voters disapprove of Republicans’ stance by a massive 20-point margin. And in the midst of this crisis, these same vulnerable Senate Republicans refuse to take meaningful action to stop the dangerous GOP lawsuit that would overturn the ACA and wipe away all of its protections.

“As unemployment insurance claims spike to unprecedented levels and the number of Americans losing their employer-provided coverage continues to climb, Republicans senators are choosing to make it more difficult for millions of Americans to get critical health coverage in the middle of a pandemic,” said DSCC spokesperson Helen Kalla. “Americans won’t forget that in a time of crisis, Republican senators refused to stop playing political games and put the health and safety of their constituents first.” 

Washington Post: First, the coronavirus pandemic took their jobs. Then, it wiped out their health insurance.
By Amy Goldstein

Key Points:

• [Gary] Easley, out of a job and out of a health plan, and Health Right, swamped with new patients, represent a ripple effect of the novel coronavirus sweeping the United States. In a nation where most health coverage is hinged to employment, the economy’s vanishing jobs are wiping out insurance in the midst of a pandemic.

• No one has a count of exactly how many people have lost their health plans, but there are clues. About 22 million workers have filed unemployment claims since mid-March, according to the most recent federal figures, and that includes only the people who have gotten through to clogged state workforce offices. The latest census data show that job-based coverage accounted for 55 percent of Americans’ health insurance, though the kinds of work disappearing the most — restaurant jobs and others in the service industry — have always been less likely to offer health benefits.

• The consulting firm Health Management Associates forecasts that perhaps 12 million to 35 million people will lose job-based insurance because of the pandemic, on top of the 27.5 million who were uninsured before the virus arrived.

• Under the Affordable Care Act, people who lose a job are allowed a special enrollment period to buy a health plan, if they can afford one, through the federal insurance marketplace created under the law. President Trump, a foe of the ACA, has resisted calls to more broadly open HealthCare.gov, the marketplace’s online enrollment system available for six weeks late in the year.

Read the full story here.

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