Texas is No. 2 in US for losing health insurance during COVID-19 pandemic, study finds
About 3 in 10 Texas adults are without health insurance after record-breaking decreases in coverage across the U.S., according to a study.
An estimated 659,000 Texans lost health insurance due to job losses between February and May amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the study by nonpartisan health care consumer group Families USA says.
About 4.9 million Texas adults under age 65 were uninsured in May, according to the study. That’s 29% of all adults in the state, which is the highest rate in the country, data show.
Texas trailed only California, which saw an estimated 689,000 workers lose insurance.
“These record-breaking increases in the number of uninsured have taken place during the country’s worst public-health crisis in more than a century and the sharpest and deepest economic downturn since World War II,” said Stan Dorn, the director of the National Center for Coverage Innovation and a senior fellow at Families USA.
Nationwide, an estimated 5.4 million workers became uninsured in the four-month period, the study says. The spike in uninsured Americans is higher than any other annual increase ever recorded. It’s nearly 40% higher than the previous record increase of 3.9 million adults who lost health insurance from 2008-2009 during the Great Recession.
The study analyzed state-by-state data of the effects of job losses on health insurance for people under 65, the age when Americans are eligible for Medicare. Researchers used U.S. Bureau and Labor statistics and insurance coverage findings by the Urban Institute to estimate the number of uninsured workers. Official data from the Census Bureau won’t be available until 2021.
“Policymakers need to know now what the approximate magnitude is of insurance losses to decide what they need to do,” Dorn told The New York Times. “So this is our best estimate for what the actual coverage losses have been.”
About half the increases in uninsured adults happened in five states: California, Texas, Florida, New York and North Carolina.
In eight states, at least 20% of adults are now uninsured, including Texas (29%), Florida (25%), Oklahoma (24%), Georgia (23%), Mississippi (22%), Nevada (21%), North Carolina (20%), and South Carolina (20%). Excluding Oklahoma, those states had among the highest COVID-19 case increases last week, according to the study.
Families USA says Congress should include efforts to protect health insurance in the next COVID-19 legislation.
“No federal COVID-19 legislation signed into law has attempted to restore or preserve comprehensive health insurance, which improves health outcomes, limits financial insecurity and promotes economic recovery,” the organization says. “Federal lawmakers can fill that gap in the next COVID-19 bill.”