The Real American Health Crisis

The U.S. Labor Department on Thursday reported that more than 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment benefits in the past six weeks as the coronavirus pandemic has spread across the U.S.. More than 3.8 million people filed for unemployment in the last week.

The new numbers mean that one out of five Americans have filed for unemployment in the past six weeks.

"There is no precedent for figures like this in modern American history," reported the Washington Post.

At the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), director of policy Heidi Shierholz wrote that the CARES Act and subsequent relief packages, including the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), other small business assistance, and one-time $1,200 payments to many Americans, "are not enough" to protect millions of people from financial ruin.

The Economic Policy Institute estimates that 12.7 million of the people who have lost their jobs since early March have also 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...Because the United States is unique among rich countries in tying health insurance benefits to employment, many of the newly unemployed will suddenly face prohibitively costly insurance options."

 Health insurer Cigna's profits have sky-rocketed for the first months of 2020 alongside EP

In the hospitality and food services industry, which has lost more than 41% of its workforce so far due to the pandemic, more than 23% of workers have employer-based health coverage. More than 56% of people who work in healthcare and social work have employer-sponsored insurance; that industry lost more than three million workers in recent weeks. In the manufacturing sector, meanwhile, about 69% of workers have health insurance through their employers; manufacturing has also lost about three million workers.