In a pandemic, one would expect that there would be an increase in health insurance provided by employers to ensure the safety of their workers. But this wasn’t what was experienced during the pandemic. The Covid-19 pandemic brought a massive loss of jobs worldwide as employers had to let go of most of their workers.
This, in turn, led to the pandemic affecting health insurance, as most companies could not keep paying their employees premium health insurance. Which severely affected most families’ access to adequate health care as most of these families depended on health insurance to help with any health issues. This is because many workers depend on their employees for their insurance, and once they lose their job, they no longer have access to the insurance.
While it is disastrous to lose your health insurance, the high cost of covid 19 treatment made insurance loss worse for citizens. Although available data shows that while there were massive job losses, the loss of employer-sponsored insurance was moderate.
This could have been due to:
- Many employees who lost their job did not have any insurance coverage. Their lack of insurance coverage might have been due to low wages, as some employers don’t include low-wage workers in their plans.
- Some workers may have been able to keep their health insurance for a short period.
However, while employer-sponsored insurance suffered a massive decline, many citizens moved on by enrolling in insurance coverage from other sources, especially government programs.
Thus the Affordable Care Act was able to play a vital role in protecting citizens who were victims of job loss and insurance loss. The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid to ensure coverage to many citizens.
Benefits of the Affordable Care Act
- The Affordable Care Act was able to provide health insurance to the majority of employees who lost the insurance coverage provided to them by their company.
- The Affordable Care Act put in means through Medicaid to help even those who didn’t have any health insurance coverage.
- The Affordable Care Act made it possible to receive free health insurance coverage.
Conclusion
The pandemic had a significant effect on the number of job losses, which led to the loss of employer-sponsored insurance. Although with the help of the Affordable Care Act through Medicaid, many people could get government-covered insurance. This helped those who had insurance before and those who didn’t have any insurance.