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February 8, 2009
Another 598,000 Americans lost their jobs last month, bringing the latest unemployment rate to 7.6 percent, signaling another increase in the rolls of the uninsured, according to new research.
The unemployment rate was up 0.4 percent from December, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And South Carolina’s unemployment rate jumped 1.1 percent to 9.5 percent in December, the highest rate since 1983, according to the state Employment Security Commission.
But only one in five unemployed workers earning less than 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or $44,100 for a family of four, has private insurance, according to a new report from Families USA.
“Losing a job often means losing health coverage,” said Ron Pollack, executive director of the Washington-based nonprofit consumer health group, which describes itself as non-partisan. “Most laid-off workers can’t afford COBRA coverage and do not qualify for public health safety-net programs and, as a result, millions of middle-class and lower-income workers become uninsured.”
Last month, the group reported that the average monthly premium for COBRA -- a program that allows people to keep their employer coverage for up to 18 months so long as they pay the full premium -- is 84 percent of the average unemployment benefit nationwide. It’s 100 percent in South Carolina, where at least 54 percent of the unemployed are uninsured, according to the report.
Lynn Bailey, a health-care economist in Columbia, says the state and nation are nearing a tipping point for health-care reform at a national level, adding that the piecemeal approach the country has taken thus far isn’t working.
“Being uninsured has become a middle-class problem -- a problem for people who have lived by the rules, gotten an education, gotten a job and cannot individually fix this,” she said. “We are long past the point that we should have responsible public officials stepping forward to deal with this.”
Moreover, said Dr. Rick Foster, vice president of the South Carolina Hospital Association, it’s part of a vicious cycle where the uninsured use the emergency room for care, and the cost of their treatment is shifted to paying patients, driving up the cost of health care and putting more financial pressure on hospitals.
“We have to find a way to expand coverage because we’re fighting a losing battle when every time you turn around there are more unemployed and more uninsured,” he said. “We need to be looking at other systems that would allow you to pool everybody and spread the risk, like the federal employee system.”
Families USA says that being unemployed and uninsured “puts both the economic stability and health security of American families at risk.” To stay afloat, it says, people need affordable health coverage, whether it’s through COBRA subsidies or expanded access to public programs like Medicaid.
Since the recession began 14 months ago, the country has lost 3.6 million jobs -- half in the last three months, according to the federal government. And Bailey says about 16 percent of adults in South Carolina are uninsured now, a number she expects to go as high as 25 percent by the end of the recession.
The lack of affordable health care is, she says, an economic development issue that will hurt the nation.
“If we’re going to be competitive in the global economy,” she said, “we will have to deal with this.”
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