ACA prevents loss of coverage due to COVID-19 job loss
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. The Perspective article in the New England Journal of Medicine, co-authored by Harvard University Ph.D. student Sumit Agarwal (also of Brigham and Women’s Hospital) and Benjamin Sommers, professor of health policy and economics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, was published online Aug. 19. To quantify the ACA’s effect on changes in health insurance coverage after job loss, the researchers looked at data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the U.S. The analysis compared the trajectories of 1,350 adults who lost their jobs before 2014 — the...