Findings from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in the Area of COVID-19 Described (Employment, Income, the Aca, and Health Insurance Coverage of Working-age Adults During the First Year of the Covid-19 Pandemic: a Reassessment): Coronavirus – COVID-19

2025 JUL 01 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- New research on Coronavirus - COVID-19 is the subject of a report. According to news originating from Los Angeles, California, by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “To examine the effects of income, income transitions, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Medicaid expansion on health insurance coverage for working-age adults who became unemployed during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and for those who remained employed. Setting and Design We estimated panel-data regression models to assess the effects of employment, income and income transitions, and the Medicaid expansion on the type of insurance coverage and uninsurance among working-age adults in the United States during 2019 and 2020.”

Financial support for this research came from Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), “Data Sources and Analytic Sample Longitudinal data from the 2019-2020 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and data on states’ Medicaid expansion status. The study participants were 6435 adults aged 26-64. Participants in all income groups who suffered spells of unemployment during the pandemic lost employer-sponsored insurance. In expansion states, the Medicaid expansion played a key role in preventing declines in insurance coverage for disadvantaged participants. The expansion was especially beneficial for participants with low pre-pandemic incomes who had unemployment spells during the pandemic (7.5% point increase in Medicaid coverage [95% CI, 1.2 to 13.8]) and for participants who transitioned from high pre-pandemic incomes to low pandemic incomes whether or not they lost their jobs (23.9% point increase in Medicaid coverage [95% CI, 7.8 to 40.0] during unemployment spells; 12.0% point increase [95% CI, 7.2 to 16.9] for those who remained employed). We found weaker evidence that private exchange coverage blunted increases in uninsurance in non-expansion states. Our findings clarify findings from earlier research by demonstrating that not only employment status and pre-pandemic income, but also income transitions, played a key role in determining who received Medicaid coverage during the pandemic in Medicaid expansion states.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “All in all, the ACA acquitted itself relatively well during a very stressful period for the United States’ system of health insurance.”

This research has been peer-reviewed.

For more information on this research see: Employment, Income, the Aca, and Health Insurance Coverage of Working-age Adults During the First Year of the Covid-19 Pandemic: a Reassessment. Health Services Research, 2025. Health Services Research can be contacted at: Wiley, 111 River St, Hoboken 07030-5774, NJ, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - http://www.wiley.com/; Health Services Research - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1475-6773)

The news correspondents report that additional information may be obtained from Jose J. Escarce, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, Dept. of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research, Los Angeles, CA 90095, United States. Additional authors for this research include Dennis Runger, James M. Campbell and Peter J. Huckfeldt.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.14646. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

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