Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Francesca Levi. Laura Carlson is out.
Speaker 1: It's day one hundred seventeen since coronavirus was declared a
Speaker 1: global pandemic. Today's main story as another wave of the
Speaker 1: virus bears down on the United States. Millions of people
Speaker 1: who lost their jobs when the outbreak began are stranded
Speaker 1: without health insurance. But first, here's what happened in virus
Speaker 1: news today. India has become a global hotspot for the pandemic.
Speaker 1: The country's outbreak is now the third biggest in the world,
Speaker 1: surpassing Russia. India now has around seven hundred thousand COVID
Speaker 1: nineteen cases. Only the US and Brazil have more. India
Speaker 1: had one of the world's strictest lockdowns at the end
Speaker 1: of March, when the country reported fewer than one thousand cases,
Speaker 1: but infections have surged since June, when Prime Minister nor
Speaker 1: Und Remote eased restrictions to rescue the economy from collapse.
Speaker 1: A New Jersey company has one approval to make a
Speaker 1: portable COVID nineteen tests that delivers results in fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorization for
Speaker 1: Beckton Dickinson to make the handheld product, which is around
Speaker 1: the size of a cell phone. It's part of a
Speaker 1: new class of tests that promised to make detecting the
Speaker 1: virus faster and cheaper. The first such test was cleared
Speaker 1: for US use in May. The country has struggled with
Speaker 1: the test shortage since the pandemics early weeks. That's led
Speaker 1: to long lines for testing in new hotspots like Arizona, Texas,
Speaker 1: and Florida. Finally, data kind firms that in the US,
Speaker 1: black and Latino people are being harmed by the coronavirus
Speaker 1: at higher rates than whites. The New York Times reported
Speaker 1: on federal data that proves this data that was only
Speaker 1: made available after the newspaper sued the Centers for Disease
Speaker 1: Control and Prevention. Latinos and Blacks have been three times
Speaker 1: as likely to become infected and twice as likely to
Speaker 1: die from the virus, according to the new numbers. And
Speaker 1: now for today's main story, as a second coronavirus wave
Speaker 1: threatens America. The virus has endangered the health of millions,
Speaker 1: not just because of the effects of COVID nineteen, but
Speaker 1: because a wave of job losses since the disease first
Speaker 1: hit has left them without health insurance. I spoke to
Speaker 1: Bloomberg reporter Read Pickart, who explains that in other developed economies,
Speaker 1: the newly unemployed could rely on systems of universal healthcare,
Speaker 1: and I'm America, they've had to navigate a bewildering menu
Speaker 1: of options to figure out if they have access to
Speaker 1: have patched together safety. We know that the pandemic led
Speaker 1: millions of people to lose their jobs, So what does
Speaker 1: that mean more broadly for healthcare? So more than half
Speaker 1: the US population relied on the workplace for health coverage
Speaker 1: before the pandemic hit. So when tens of millions of
Speaker 1: people lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic
Speaker 1: and the recession that it's spurred, millions of people found
Speaker 1: themselves not just out of work, but without health insurance.
Speaker 1: And you know, the US is pretty unique in this way,
Speaker 1: and the fact that many other countries have, you know,
Speaker 1: a national health care system available to all regardless of
Speaker 1: your work status. But in the US, whether you have
Speaker 1: insurance or not, and therefore access to affordable healthcare largely
Speaker 1: depends on whether you have a job or not. So
Speaker 1: you know, Congress acknowledged that problem and set aside billions
Speaker 1: of dollars to help pay for COVID nineteen testing and
Speaker 1: treatment for the uninsured. But that aid doesn't cover regular
Speaker 1: or more routine medical costs. And so when we talk
Speaker 1: about all of these people who lost health insurance because
Speaker 1: of the job losses during the pandemic, how many people
Speaker 1: are we actually talking So there are several estimates to
Speaker 1: how many people have lost their health insurance, and it
Speaker 1: largely depends on how you want to look at the losses.
Speaker 1: So the Economic Policy Institute, for instance, estimated that more
Speaker 1: than sixteen million workers lost their employer provided health insurance
Speaker 1: as of early May. If you were to include dependence
Speaker 1: like spouses and children. The Kaiser Family Foundation actually estimated
Speaker 1: that almost twenty seven million people could have lost their
Speaker 1: employer responsive coverage and become uninsured between March and May.
Speaker 1: And you know, the good news at least is that
Speaker 1: most of these people who lost their health insurance were
Speaker 1: in a position to join a family member's plan or
Speaker 1: qualify for Medicaid or the Affordable Care Act marketplace tax
Speaker 1: credits um and those are the tax credits that help
Speaker 1: reduce the costs of the private plans that you know
Speaker 1: could replace job space coverage for households with lower moderate incomes.
Speaker 1: But at least what we've found is that not everyone
Speaker 1: fits into one of those buckets. So without Medicaid and
Speaker 1: without a subsidy, paying for health insurance is incredibly expensive
Speaker 1: and many people may choose to just go without. And
Speaker 1: the whole seemed to be even bigger in states that
Speaker 1: haven't expanded Medicaid, like Florida and Texas. Yeah, tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit more about Florida and Texas. What is
Speaker 1: unique about those states? So Florida and Texas are unique
Speaker 1: in the fact that that they have enormous populations, but
Speaker 1: they chose not to expand Medicaid. So in those states,
Speaker 1: you know, if you don't qualify for an a s
Speaker 1: A subsidy UM, and you don't qualify for their normal
Speaker 1: Medicaid programs, you have this this gap that people are
Speaker 1: falling into, and the gap can be exacerbated by the
Speaker 1: fact that UM in those states, there have also been
Speaker 1: issues with people getting their unemployment insurance and getting UM
Speaker 1: approved for it. So, for instance, UM I talked to
Speaker 1: someone in Texas who because it took them months to
Speaker 1: get their unemployment insurance approved and that they didn't have
Speaker 1: qualify for Medicaid. They ended up not qualifying for an
Speaker 1: A C A tax credit either because they couldn't show
Speaker 1: that they had that income. When in fact, if they
Speaker 1: had gotten their jobless benefits in an appropriate amount of time,
Speaker 1: then then they would have qualified and and the costs
Speaker 1: would have been hundreds of dollars cheaper for that plan.
Speaker 1: And of course the delay in getting these jobless benefits
Speaker 1: is itself sort of a by product of the pandemic. Right,
Speaker 1: so many people are applying for unemployment benefits at the
Speaker 1: same time that people are having trouble even getting their
Speaker 1: phone calls answered exactly. So so this is not something,
Speaker 1: um that is normal for that unemployment insurance system. It's
Speaker 1: they've gotten thousands and thousands of calls, and um, the
Speaker 1: systems and the websites have been completely overwhelmed by the
Speaker 1: amount of demand for these benefits, and and and so
Speaker 1: you just have this issue where you know, the pandemic
Speaker 1: itself has exposed holes in America's safety net. So you know,
Speaker 1: those job losses strain the unemployment insurance system greatly, and
Speaker 1: so you know, many out of work Americans found themselves
Speaker 1: waiting weeks or even months for their entitled aid. Others
Speaker 1: found that they didn't even qualify. And you know, the
Speaker 1: loss of health insurance is just kind of the latest
Speaker 1: issue to come to light. So, you know, while Medicaid
Speaker 1: and a c A have helped many more from going
Speaker 1: on an shirt UM, gaps remained, and those gaps show
Speaker 1: an entirely different way the kind of safety net is
Speaker 1: not quite working for all us workers. So is this
Speaker 1: going to continue to be an issue going forward? Is
Speaker 1: the problem going to get any better? When you know,
Speaker 1: labor market statistics start start taking up and the outlook
Speaker 1: looks more at beeat so what we've seen in the
Speaker 1: weeks since these estimates were made. So so these estimates
Speaker 1: you know, are going up through May basically, and and
Speaker 1: since then we've gotten the employment reports from the Department
Speaker 1: of Labor for both May and June, and the labor
Speaker 1: market has changed a lot. Millions of people have been
Speaker 1: brought back onto employers payrolls, especially in things like food services,
Speaker 1: and the unemployment rate has dropped substantially from where it was,
Speaker 1: though remains extremely high. But the problem is that this
Speaker 1: rebound that we're seeing in the jobs market UM is
Speaker 1: not exactly directly terrible to this problem being solved in
Speaker 1: terms of health insurance, and that's because of the way
Speaker 1: that these these rehirings are broken down. So the problem
Speaker 1: is that employees and sectors like food services, where a
Speaker 1: lot of those games have been seen, have relatively low
Speaker 1: coverage rates for employer provided health insurance in the first place. Meanwhile, um,
Speaker 1: you know, sectors like state governments, which often provide health insurance,
Speaker 1: continue to lay off workers. So you know, you put
Speaker 1: that together, and on top of that, you have more
Speaker 1: than a million people apply for unemployment benefits each week,
Speaker 1: and we're seeing that people are continuing to lose their
Speaker 1: jobs at an alarming rate. What does this kind of
Speaker 1: tell us about the strength of our safety net and
Speaker 1: about what might happen in the future with the way
Speaker 1: that we think about how Americans are insured. This is
Speaker 1: the first recession that we've been in where we've had
Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act, and there's no doubt when all
Speaker 1: of this is said and done with that the a
Speaker 1: c A will have kept many from going uninsured in
Speaker 1: the wake of losing their employer sponsored coverage. But I
Speaker 1: think what it really shows is that in the best
Speaker 1: of times, the safety net misses some people. And when
Speaker 1: we talk about health insurance, we I think we've learned
Speaker 1: that pairing extreme job loss with that patch together safety
Speaker 1: net has let millions of people fall through. And now
Speaker 1: some people are finding themselves in a scenario where they're
Speaker 1: having to decide, well, do I pay hundreds of dollars
Speaker 1: towards having health insurance because my employer sponsored health coverage
Speaker 1: is gone, or perhaps because my state decided not to
Speaker 1: expand Medicaid? Where do I put food on the table
Speaker 1: or pay my bills? And I think that is a
Speaker 1: very unique problem America is facing um and one that's
Speaker 1: really hard to swallow. That was read Picker. You can
Speaker 1: read her story with John Tazzi on Bloomberg dot com.
Speaker 1: And that's it for our show. For coverage of the
Speaker 1: outbreak from bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com
Speaker 1: slash Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave
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Speaker 1: global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by two
Speaker 1: for foreheads, Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and Laura Carlson. Today's
Speaker 1: main story was reported by Red Picker. Original music by
Speaker 1: Leo sidri Our. Editors are Rick Shine and me Francesco.
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