Study: 5.4 million Americans lost their health insurance amid coronavirus pandemic

(Image credit: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

published 13 July 2020

A new study finds that due to job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic, an estimated 5.4 million Americans had their health insurance dropped between February and May.

The analysis was conducted by Families U.S.A., a nonpartisan consumer advocacy group, and will be released on Tuesday. During the recession of 2008 and 2009, 3.9 million adults lost their health insurance, and study author Stan Dorn told The New York Times he knew the current numbers "would be big. This is the worst economic downturn since World War II. It dwarfs the Great Recession. So it's not surprising that we would see the worst increase in the uninsured."

The study looked at laid-off adults younger than 65, when Americans become eligible for Medicare, and found that people in California, Texas, Florida, New York, and North Carolina accounted for 46 percent of coverage losses from the pandemic. In 13 states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, 43 percent of laid-off workers became uninsured, nearly double the amount in the 37 states that did expand Medicaid.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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