Wednesday, December 9, 2020

How Has the Pandemic Affected Health Coverage in the U.S.?

KFF

Just Released

How is the Number of People with Employer-Based Health Coverage Changing During the Pandemic?

A KFF analysis of administrative data suggests that relatively few Americans have lost job-based health insurance amid the economic chaos of the pandemic -- and that many who did likely found a safety net in coverage through Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act’s individual market.

While employment rates fell by 6.2 percent nationally from March to September, enrollment in the fully-insured group market decreased by just 1.5 percent, finds the review of administrative data that insurers file with state regulators. This finding, when extrapolated to the entire group health insurance market, including self-insured employer plans, yields a very rough estimate that two to three million people may have lost employer-based coverage between March and September. (About 158 million Americans had employer coverage in 2019.)

At the same time, there are signs that the decline in employer-based health insurance coverage may have been offset by gains in Medicaid enrollment and stable enrollment in the individual market. Medicaid enrollment grew by more than four million people nationally from February through July, data show. And individual market enrollment was relatively steady from March to September 2020, with less attrition than is typical during these months.

The analysis explores several possible explanations for the relatively modest decrease in employer-based coverage despite massive job losses. It also notes that even if the uninsured rate has indeed held steady, tens of millions of Americans remain without health coverage during the worst pandemic to hit the country in 100 years.

For the full analysis, as well as other data and analyses related to health coverage and the coronavirus pandemic, visit kff.org.

Read the Policy Watch Post

Filling the need for trusted information on national health issues, KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation) is a nonprofit organization based in San Francisco, California.

Contacts:

Chris Lee | (202) 654-1403 | clee@kff.org

kff.org | khn.org

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