Insurance too costly for jobless Utahns

It won't be found with the pink slip or in the dire national unemployment figures released Friday, but an economic double-whammy is in store for the millions of workers who have lost their jobs — they've also lost their medical insurance.

Some can keep the coverage they had as part of their fringe-benefits package under the Consolidated Omnibus Reconciliation Act (COBRA), an option that allows workers to remain in an insurance plan after leaving a job — as long as they can shoulder the cost of the premium that they used to share with the employer.

In reality, the majority of workers in Utah and around the country who are laid off are likely to join the ranks of the uninsured. According to a state-by-state assessment of unemployment payments and the cost of COBRA premiums released on Friday, most people simply won't be able to afford maintaining the coverage.

"COBRA health coverage is great in theory and lousy in reality," said Ron Pollack, the executive director of the national health-care policy research nonprofit, Families USA, who has consulted with Utah officials trying to reform the health-care system here.

A Utah worker with a family would have to pay $1,030 — 77 percent — of the monthly $1,341 state unemployment check in order to maintain medical coverage. Single Utahns fair better: 27 percent of their unemployment would be needed to continue coverage under COBRA, according to a state-by-state analysis.

Families USA calculated average monthly benefits by multiplying average weekly benefits for all unemployed workers by a factor of 4.3. This calculation assumes that individuals receive unemployment benefits for four consecutive full weeks.

That also assumes that a worker manages to negotiate the online maze of state requirements to get unemployment. Several recently unemployed Utahns have told the Deseret News that the process is incredibly confusing, that they are being turned down multiple times and that the telephone line into the Department of Workforce Services is always busy and doesn't permit callers to be on hold.

Utah is among 41 states nationwide where extending coverage with COBRA is three-fourths or more of state unemployment compensation, according to the Families USA report. The group's report was released a few hours after the U.S. Department of Labor released December unemployment figures that show the highest number of job losses since 1945 and an unemployment percentage — 7.2 — that is the highest in 16 years.

The number of people without insurance was already a big problem well before the recession started in September. An estimated 45 million Americans, including 300,000 Utahns, had no insurance, and the numbers of the uninsured and underinsured will likely increase significantly across the country, Pollack said.

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