Was going to post this in response to a comment stating that COBRA is affordable and when you can't you qualify for medicaid, but it was deleted. Here's some uncomfortable facts:

In truth, most can't afford COBRA and many of the most COVID hard-hit industries don't even have that option because they were never offered employer-based healthcare to begin with

A lot of Conservative|Libertarian folks will tell you: "The current system works and when it fails there are social protections to help people." This is simply a nice fantasy perpetuated by those that have never had to rely on the American social safety net. In truth, our social safety net has never been that strong and has been weakened by ~60 years of conservative-led entitlement cuts while we have expanded military spending and corporate welfare.

Most workers who've lost their job cannot afford an additional $20k/year for COBRA while not being employed (see quote from EPI below). In fact, it's much worse than that: 50% of Americans struggle to confront an unexpected $400 expense. (https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2018-repor...)

Check these statements from the director of the Economic Policy Institute: (https://www.marketplace.org/2020/05/13/cobra-health-insuranc...)

"""

EPI (Economic Policy Institute) research director Josh Bivens said that fewer than half of all workers receive health insurance from their employer, and COVID-19 has hit the hardest among workers with low pay and meager benefits. “Job losses so far in this crisis have been pretty concentrated in sectors like accommodations and restaurants that don’t tend to offer employer-provided health insurance,” he said.

Workers who get their health insurance through their employers can keep it. Under a provision of federal benefits law called COBRA, most employees who lose or leave a job can remain on their employer’s health plan for at least 18 months.

But it isn’t cheap.

“Very few people sign up for COBRA,” said Matthew Rae, associate director of the Health Care Marketplace project at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “And the reason is, it’s unbelievably expensive. The worker’s got to pay the full cost, so you end up paying — for a family of four — somewhere north, on average, of $20,000 a year.”

"""

The gap from "affording cobra" to "no assets and no income" which is the basic requirement for medicaid is pretty far. States use the federal poverty guideline which has been kept too low for years due to politics to determine eligibility. For a single person that's $12,490 and for a family of four that's $25,750. Where in the US are either of those a livable wage? Do any of those places have reasonable access to work and social services?

In fact, I'm actually surprised that only half of American's fear this. I'd surmise that those who don't are either unaware of the potential for the looming crisis or otherwise fatalistic.

user:	ectqmbe
created:	January 17, 2020
karma:	3