One-two punch: 40,000 Utahns lost jobs and health insurance in 2008

A routine post-delivery visit to the doctor in August 2008 turned out anything but for Allison Loomis. When Loomis, doing her best to dutifully be the brand new mom, checked in with the receptionist at her Provo clinic, she was told that her insurance plan wasn't going to cover the visit and, by the way, didn't cover the last two.

"I don't know if I even said anything," Loomis recalls. "The expression on my face must have said everything I was feeling."

Um … well, the plan doesn't exist, she was told.

"I was just sick," she said.

But she wasn't surprised.

She and her husband, Chad, had begun dueling with their employer and with two separate medical insurance plans about seven months into her pregnancy.

"My 36-hour labor was nothing compared to the ordeal of dealing with this insurance mess," Loomis said. "Postpartum blues were easier to get through."

The Loomis family is among the 40,200 Utahns who lost insurance coverage when they lost their jobs in 2008. A report issued Tuesday by Families USA, the country's leading health-care consumer research and advocacy group, the percentage of uninsured adults in Utah grew to 17.6 percent — about 320,000 people — in 2006-08 and is projected to reach 18.8 percent by the end of 2009.

"The loss of a job is a terrible blow to working families, but when health insurance is lost along with the job, it is a devastating one-two punch," Ron Pollack, Families USA executive director said Tuesday. "The uninsured are less likely to get the care that they need when they need it, and they may face a financial catastrophe when medical bills start to pile up.

Because nearly 62 percent of working Americans under age 65 have insurance as a job benefit, when they lose their jobs they also lose health-care coverage, a situation the research and advocacy group calls a "one-two punch" of the American system of health care, Pollack said.

It was a three-four punch for the Loomises.

When the marketing company they both worked for went under just after their daughter was born, they found out they couldn't extend coverage through COBRA because the company had stopped paying its side of the premium and the insurer hadn't been paying any of the employees' medical bills for 90 days.