It is time to overhaul how we structure hospital insurance payments. Our current reimbursement model only serves to illustrate the economic fragility of a system that cannot withstand a major public health crisis. Fifty-five percent of American receive health insurance through the workplace. The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 16.2 million workers could have lost their employer-based health insurance. With further expected job losses the virus could cost 47 million jobs.
The Hastings Center
May 29, 2020
As bad as the national figures are, the situation in individual states is even worse. An interactive map on the Economic Policy Institute’s website shows more than one-third of workers in Georgia (39%), Kentucky (38%), and Hawaii (35%) have filed for jobless benefits. Just behind are Washington (31%), Louisiana, Nevada and Rhode Island (30% each), Michigan (29%), and Pennsylvania (28%).
People's Weekly World
May 29, 2020
The multiple downsides of OPT have been documented. The Economic Policy Institute noted in 2015, it not only poses risks to American workers, but “will further reduce employment opportunities for U.S. graduates in STEM fields.”
Immigration Reform
May 29, 2020
Alongside these job losses, the Economic Policy Institute calculates at least 16.2 million people lost employer-provided health insurance along with their jobs. Additionally, the unprecedented length of joblessness throws a wrench in momentum made by workers and their unions for better wages.
Courthouse News Service
May 29, 2020
Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said she can “think of only one word” to describe the current economy: “devastation.”
“I try to come up with another word, but ‘devastation’ — the loss to the economy and jobs and the loss to the people,” Gould said, “and the amount of pain that is causing to people.”
Citing the numbers seeking unemployment assistance and the 14.7% unemployment rate revealed May 8, Gould said, “The numbers are devastating. They’re huge. … I haven’t seen a name for it.”
Catholic News Service
May 29, 2020
Heidi Shierholz at the Economic Policy Institute says that’s sapping confidence, too.
“That means that they are trying to subsist on much lower income. They’re going to have to cut their spending and it will make the recession worse,” Shierholz said.
Marketplace
May 29, 2020
That extra cash is important, and not just because I need it to live. Unemployment benefits on average have fallen far below the already low wages that most jobs typically pay, especially in cities where basic necessities like housing have become cost-prohibitive for working-class Americans. The extra $600 helps bridge that gap, and, according to a recent analysis from the Economic Policy Institute, cutting that extra $600 now would have devastating macroeconomic consequences, as less money is circulating through an already tenuous economy.
But even with those caveats, the fact that compensation from a social safety net program is surpassing wages in the richest country in the world is an embarrassment. It’s no secret that wages have been stagnant for decades, while the vast majority of income growth has gone to the richest Americans. According to a 2018 Pew Research study, the real average wage for American workers has the same purchasing power as it did in the late 1970s. That same year, however, the Economic Policy Institute found that wages for the top 1% of income earners went up by 151% since 1979. This disparity in wage growth isn’t a coincidence—that’s around the same time President Ronald Reagan’s administration began to undermine the power of organized labor.
Barron’s
May 29, 2020
But in fact, that study – authored by New York University economist Edward N. Wolff and published by the progressive-leaning Economic Policy Institute – appeared in 2002. Wolff’s study projected how Americans aged 47 to 64 in the year 1999 would fare as they shifted into retirement.
Forbes
May 29, 2020
Erik Hurst, deputy director of the Becker Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago and Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute joined us.
NPR
May 29, 2020