Job loss stemming from the coronavirus stripped health insurance from an estimated 659,000 Texans between February and May, according to a new study.
The analysis, published Tuesday by Families USA, a nonpartisan consumer advocacy group, found that 5.4 million laid-off workers across the country lost their health insurance from February to March.
The report called the past few months the “deepest economic crash since World War II,” adding that job loss from the pandemic has left more people uninsured than ever recorded. The increase in uninsured Americans this spring is 39% higher than the previous record, set during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009, when 3.9 million adults under the age of 65 lost insurance.
In Texas, 29% of adults under 65 — about 4.9 million people — were estimated to be without health insurance this May, the highest uninsured rate of all states. In 2018, a quarter of adults under 65 were uninsured in Texas.