Posted on August 29, 2011 14:33
Categories: Employer and Individual Insurance
Topics: Access/Barriers | Health Care Reform | Individual Coverage
On June 23, the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) released a brief examining health coverage challenges facing unemployed individuals and outlining their options for maintaining coverage. The brief notes that 13.9 million individuals were unemployed in May 2011, of whom 6.2 million had been uninsured for at least six months. The authors suggest that individuals’ options to maintain health coverage diminish as they remain unemployed for six months or more, highlighting COBRA, public health coverage, and the individual insurance market as options for unemployed individuals to obtain health coverage. The authors assert that implementation of the national health care reform law will result in a wider range of affordable coverage options for the unemployed.
From the report:
In May 2011, 13.9 million people in the U.S. were unemployed, and 6.2 million of these workers had been unemployed for six months or more.1 The weak job market jeopardizes health coverage for the 57% of the nonelderly population in the U.S. that receive health insurance through an employer.2 When individuals with employer-sponsored coverage become unemployed, they face the loss of both income and health insurance. Moreover, any of the employee's dependents that are covered through the employer could also lose coverage. The long-term unemployed are particularly vulnerable to loss of coverage as they face extended periods of reduced or no income.
Full report: Health Coverage for the Unemployed (PDF | 564 KB) 
Kaiser Family Foundation. (2011). Health coverage for the unemployed. Schwartz, Kathryn and Streeter, Sonya.
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