Private Insurance Limits and Responses

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a number of existing flaws in the United States’ patchwork approach to paying for and providing access to medical care. Shelter-in-place orders, social distancing, and other public health strategies employed to address the pandemic spawned a global recession, causing rapid and high unemployment rates in many countries. The U.S. unemployment rate peaked in April 2020 at 14.7%, higher than in any previous period since World War II. The United States has long hewed an anachronistic policy of relying heavily on private employers to provide health insurance to a substantial portion of the population. Those who are not eligible for employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) must fend for themselves in the non-group market, unless they qualify for government-sponsored insurance or safety net programs. Companion Chapters in this volume describe the COVID-related challenges for Medicaid and the uninsured, while this Chapter focuses on the private insurance market. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) dramatically overhauled health insurance in the United States. But those reforms have been under continuous threat of dilution or wholesale repeal, including a case currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court that could strike down the entire Act. Thus, any evaluation of the benefits or demerits of the private insurance market must be read against the possibility that existing consumer protections could be eliminated with the stroke of a pen.