New research from the Economic Policy Institute reveals that the number of Americans who are losing their employer-based health insurance is growing rapidly, with more than 30 million people laid off or furloughed in the last six weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic.
EPI estimates that 12.7 million of the people who have lost their jobs since early March have lost their health insurance.
“The linkage between specific jobs and the availability of health insurance is a prime source of inefficiency and inequity in the U.S. health system,” wrote EPI research director Josh Bivens and economist Ben Zipperer. “It is especially terrifying for workers to lose their health insurance as a result of, and during, an ongoing pandemic.”
EPI released its new research shortly after government watchdog Public Citizen tweeted sarcastically that the U.S. has a “normal and fine healthcare system,” sharing a news story about health insurer Cigna’s skyrocketing profits for the first months of 2020 alongside EPI’s earlier headline from just two weeks ago when the think tank estimated 9.2 million Americans had lost their employer-based health insurance.
Nation of Change
May 5, 2020
The third installment of the Reilly Center’s Communications & COVID-19 virtual event series, An Unequal Relationship: Race and COVID-19, will investigate the racial disparities accompanying the COVID-19 outbreak. Louisiana Budget Project’s Director of Public Affairs and Outreach Davante Lewis will lead the conversation.The complete list of panelists features:
- Davante Lewis, Director of Public Affairs and Outreach, Louisiana Budget Project, Moderator
- Jarvis DeBerry, Former Deputy Opinions Editor, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
- Rebekah Gee, M.D., MPH, CEO Health Care Services, LSU Health
- Denese Shervington M.D., MPH, Humanistic Integrative Psychiatry, President and CEO, Institute of Women and Ethnic Studies, UNO Research and Technology Foundation, Inc.
- Jenny Sullivan, Director of Housing and Health Integration, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
- Jhacova Williams, Ph.D., Economist for Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy (PREE)
Registration for An Unequal Relationship: Race and COVID-19 and each of the events in the Communications & COVID-19 series can be found online. Registrants will receive a Zoom meeting link and information on how to join. The events will also be recorded and uploaded to the Manship School’s YouTube channel.
Louisiana State University Manship School of Communication
May 5, 2020
“That means many workers who lose their job as a result of the virus will be counted as dropping out of the labor force instead of as unemployed,” said Heidi Shierholz, a former chief economist at the Labor Department, and now head of policy at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.
Reuters
May 5, 2020
A survey by the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, examined the problem. It found that for every 10 people who were able to successfully claim unemployment benefits, three or four others tried but were frustrated by the system and two others did not try because they found the system too difficult.
Omaha World-Herald
May 5, 2020
“It’s starting to seem like the new normal,” said Julia Wolfe, an analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. “But I think it’s important to ground ourselves in that this is still a huge shock to a lot of workers and their families and also represents a huge strain on the unemployment insurance system.”
Cronkite News
May 5, 2020
Nevada’s job market has so far been one of the hardest hit in the country. And according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute, the state now has 25% of its workforce unemployed.
KUNR
May 5, 2020
“Congress has the power to protect ordinary workers during this public health and economic crisis,” Thea Lee, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said.
Nation of Change
May 5, 2020
“All else equal, job loss of the magnitude reflected in the UI claims of the last six weeks would translate into an unemployment rate of 20.5 [percent],” the Economic Policy Institute’s Heidi Shierholz wrote in reaction to the figure. But, she notes, “in good times and bad,” the white unemployment rate is about 0.9 times the overall unemployment rate, while the black unemployment rate tends to be 1.8 times the overall unemployment rate. “That means that an overall unemployment rate of 20.5 [percent] would translate into a white unemployment rate of 18.4 [percent] and a black unemployment rate of 36.8 [percent],” she writes.
Politico
May 5, 2020
The most recent estimates, offered by both the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities and the Economic Policy Institute, project a shortfall for the states alone of about $500 billion from now through June 2021, with localities losing an additional $250 billion. Even those numbers are based on projections of unemployment levels that increasingly look far too optimistic. With more than 30 million already filing for unemployment, we are nearing the record for joblessness set in the Great Depression. James Knightley, chief economist of ING, notes that by the end of May, fewer than one in two working-age Americans will be drawing a paycheck. If McConnell were to block aid to the states and localities, wholesale layoffs of teachers, police, public hospital staff, and caregivers for the poor and vulnerable would add hundreds of thousands to the number of unemployed.
The Nation
May 5, 2020
Teacher shortages are a more severe problem in high-poverty areas with lower pay, according to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, D.C.
Spartan Newsroom
May 5, 2020