Quote:
Originally Posted by blueash
Whatever else may happen, this should be a teaching moment of the risk of having your health insurance tied to your place of employment. When suddenly 30% of the work force loses their job, they will also lose their own and possibly their family's coverage. While the top few % can afford to pay for their own coverage, the many cannot.
Job loss does qualify a person to apply for coverage via the ACA [Obamacare] but this requires out of pocket payment and a large number of low wage earners do not qualify as when the law was written it was believed that those low earners would qualify for state Medicaid benefits.
To avoid being erased for political comments, I will avoid making any suggestion. But I do think that the pandemic illustrates a major downside of losing insurance at the same time as losing employment.
By the way, under the ACA you can buy coverage to begin the first day of the month AFTER your insurance ends. If your job loss is on April 3rd, fairly reasonable date in this environment; no ACA coverage, if I read the rules correctly, until May 1. Try hard not to get sick in April. A request to open the option to enroll earlier was turned down by the Federal Gov. And of course the Supreme Court has on its docket an appeal designed to completely end the ACA, to be heard after the November election. With no ACA, these unemployed low and moderately paid Americans would have no affordable market.
I foresee a push to change in how we provide health care coverage to our citizens.
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Every single insurance company has said they will cover for COVID treatment anyone who lost their coverage over the current layoffs as well as waiving copays for COVID treatment.
Socialized medicine sucks big time. Why do you think Canadians cross over for treatment. My niece lives in Italy and part of the reason so many died is because the average wait for a doctor appt. is weeks.
The ACA is way too expensive for folks out of work. It was the “you must buy mandate” that people resented. I know. I was one who refused to buy just because I was told I had to.