Affordable Care Act key to keeping people insured amid COVID 19-related job losses

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-08/htcs-aca081820.php

 

News Release 19-Aug-2020
Overturning the ACA could be devastating to patients, clinicians, hospitals, and state economies that are already struggling with the pandemic's effects
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

 

Widespread layoffs amid the COVID-19 pandemic threaten to cut off millions of people from their employer-sponsored health insurance plans. But the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will protect many of these people and their families from losing coverage, according to a new study.


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The authors noted that insurance coverage gaps remain even with the ACA, and that the law's future is still uncertain amid a Supreme Court challenge from 18 Republican state attorneys general and the Trump administration, who are arguing that the law is unconstitutional.

"In the current context of millions of Americans losing their jobs and an ongoing pandemic, overturning the ACA would most likely be devastating to patients, clinicians, hospitals, and state economies," the authors wrote. "The very virus that has brought about record unemployment levels is the same agent that makes health insurance--and the new options created under the ACA--more important than ever."