Layoffs expose our health system's failings

If there was any doubt that we are in a health insurance crisis, two weeks of catastrophic numbers on jobless claims should remove all doubt.

Around 49% of the U.S. population relies on employer-sponsored health insurance to help pay for doctor visits, emergency care and the whole range of other services generally included under the term health care, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And most of the 84,000 Marylanders who claimed unemployment last week, up from 42,000 the week before, just lost whatever health insurance they got at work when they need it most.

The reason for the massive unemployment numbers, of course, is the spreading coronavirus pandemic. The local, state, national and global economy is stuttering to a halt as efforts to slow the virus and limit the death toll shut all but essential businesses.

Among those affected were 8,983 Anne Arundel County residents, victims of layoffs, furloughs and even some firings in tourism, retail, service and other sectors of the local economy.

The safety net for this, if you can call it that, is insurance available through the Affordable Care Act and its various state iterations. It works for only those who can afford it, which may not include many of the newly unemployed.

In Maryland, state officials are extending a special enrollment period to buy insurance through the Maryland health exchange after about 10,000 people responded.

Enrollment has been extended to June 15, created for people who did not get coverage through their jobs.

State insurance officials have ordered insurers selling exchange plans to cover the cost of coronavirus testing and offer certain protections and benefits such as allowing consumers to buy extra doses of their medications. Medicaid also is covering testing, and so are many private insurers.

The enrollment period in Maryland began March 16, and so far about 85% of those enrolled have qualified for subsidized private plans or Medicaid, the government health program for low-income residents.

The federal government declined to reopen enrollment on the federal exchange that serves about three dozen states.

That is nuts.

Republicans in Washington hate the idea of federally supported health care. They practically gave away the House of Representatives with their continual, failed efforts to repeal this program. President Donald Trump cited repealing the law as one of his administration's top goals, and while he has failed at that he has weakened the law and reduced its benefits.

Way back in 2010, an Annapolis insurance consultant ruefully told the Capital Gazette Editorial Board that the U.S. healthcare system was on an inevitable course to a single-payer system. Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act was dubbed in an intended slight to President Barack Obama, would fail and the only choice would be government insurance for all.

That hasn't happened, yet. The pandemic will go a long way to proving him right.

Maryland is moving to pay for the insured and other costs related to the coronavirus pandemic by allowing those hospitals to temporarily raise rates charged to all patients. How will it happen in other states?

When the pandemic is passed, you can bet the conversation about fixing the inhumane way this nation provides basic health care to its citizens will be changed forever.

Public officials who continue to oppose fixing the problems in how Americans obtain and pay for health care after they are exposed by this crisis should be removed in the next election.