If you’ve been wondering (again) how much of a toll the Great Recession has had on the American healthcare system, yet another study has tried to tried to estimate how much Americans have suffered in the last few years. A new study by researchers at Cornell, Indiana University and Carnegie-Mellon now estimates that 9.3 million Americans lost their health insurance as a result of increased unemployment during the recession.
To put that into context, the study estimates that nine times as many Americans lost their health insurance in the recession of 2007-2009 as did during the recession of 2001. Men were disproportionately affected, especially older, white, well-educated men. Of adults estimated to have lost coverage, 7.1 million were men and 2.2 million were women.
In one of the few bright spots in the study, the researchers estimated that 4.2 million children picked up health insurance during the recession. That may be because as parents lose their jobs, their children fall into the social safety nets of Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Interestingly, even Americans who did not lose their jobs suffered the loss of health insurance during the recession, probably because employers cut health insurance benefits, cut employee hours or increased employee contributions towards health insurance to the point where some dropped their health insurance coverage.
See the full paper here.
Did you lose your health insurance during the Great Recession? Tell us about it!
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- Nearly 50 million Americans On Medicaid for Health Insurance in 2009
- Almost 60 Million Americans Go Without Health Insurance in Last Year
- U.S. Has A New Record: 50.7 million Americans Uninsured
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