- The White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) authored a new issue brief revealing that states with high uninsured rates saw more “excess deaths” during the COVID-19 pandemic that stemmed from reasons like meager care in overwhelmed hospitals. The CEA estimated a 10-percentage point increase in the pre-pandemic uninsured rate was associated with a 4.8 percentage point increase in excess mortality. Excess mortality differed significantly across states between March 2020 and March 2022, from a low of 5.7 percent in Hawaii to a high of 27.4 percent in Arizona. The brief is another data point supporting that the COVID-19 pandemic indirectly killed millions of people because of its effect on health systems and society in general. (Article here)
July 13, 2022
Access & Coverage