Will Millions More Americans be Without Health Insurance Now?
Well, here’s another financial crisis to follow the first one. Millions of Americans lost their jobs with the largest unemployment spike in most of our adult lives. Lots of those people lost their health benefits too, but some where able to take advantage of a $25 billion dollar COBRA subsidy which defrayed 65% of the costs of the federal medical plan extension. But that plan is due to expire, and millions more may face the loss of medical benefits.
Learn more about Unemployment Health Insurance Options.
These subsidies are not trivial either, but are though to average about $722 a family. And Congress does not seem ready to extend the benefit either. They are very busy with the current US health care debate. The average premium for COBRA has also been calculated to consumer a large percentage of state unemployment benefit checks. The plan was implemented to help more families keep their group coverage until they found a new job.
Unemployment hasn’t been dipping yet. Though of course, the same type of people who were slow to tell us we were in a recession also seem quick to tell us it is over! Hopefully the silver lining in this growing problem will be quick action implementing some sort of health reform that we Americans can live with. And that choice of a word, live, was not an accident!