ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The Trump administration’s slashing of the federal workforce is not just displacing workers, it’s disrupting entire households. Some are just learning that health coverage they thought they had their whole family on has ended. NPR’s Andrea Hsu reports.
ANDREA HSU, BYLINE: The day I met Danielle Waterfield, she was supposed to be at physical therapy. But a day earlier, she’d canceled the appointment, telling them…
DANIELLE WATERFIELD: I’m sorry. I’ve just learned today that I may not have coverage.
HSU: That’s despite the fact she was paying her health care premiums through her paychecks continuously. Jennifer Raulin learned last week her family was no longer insured. Her older son just turned 11, but…
JENNIFER RAULIN: I haven’t been able to set up his well visit appointment. Can’t get his vaccines.
HSU: And on top of that…
RAULIN: Both of my children play baseball. And so now every time they have a game, I hold my breath and hope that they don’t get hurt.
HSU: Raulin and Waterfield worked for two different branches of the Commerce Department. Both were booted from their jobs almost two months ago, in President Trump’s mass purge of probationary employees – typically the more recent hires. Now weeks later, a federal judge ruled their firings were probably illegal and ordered them reinstated. But then, a few weeks after that, an appeals court vacated that order, and they were fired again, dating back to their original termination dates. As the court battle continues, Raulin sums it up this way.
RAULIN: We have been living in purgatory for the past couple months, but this whole health care thing has really taken a darker turn.
HSU: How this whole health care thing came about is emblematic of the Trump administration’s break-first-ask-questions-later approach to remaking the federal government. Firings have been carried out with such haste that HR departments have struggled to answer questions, and now hundreds of Commerce Department employees may be in this precarious position with lapsed health care coverage. Danielle Waterfield says it feels like an attack on her family’s security.
WATERFIELD: To pull the rug out like this without any warning is inhumane, in my opinion. It completely ignores the fact that you’re dealing with people.
HSU: The Commerce Department has not responded to NPR’s questions about these employees’ health benefits, but here’s what we’ve gathered. After the employees were first fired, many were told their health coverage would end on April 8, 31 days after their last pay period. They were given instructions for how they could do the federal employee version of COBRA and keep their coverage, fairly standard for anyone with employer-sponsored health care.
The real chaos began when they were reinstated a couple weeks later. They were brought back and put on paid leave. Raulin says a supervisor assured her that health benefits were being restored. Plus, she was still paying her premium through her paycheck.
RAULIN: So as far as we were concerned, we were still covered.
HSU: Danielle Waterfield wanted to play it safe. She sent her insurer her reinstatement letter and was told, all good, no break in coverage.
WATERFIELD: Within a week, I had new insurance cards sent to my entire family.
HSU: By then, she’d already looked into moving the family to her husband’s health insurance. She feels lucky to have that option. But she learned she can’t do that until she can prove she’s lost her coverage. So she thought, well, since I’ve been paying the premiums, let’s move some doctors’ visits up – a routine checkup for her teenager, a diabetes appointment for her husband, her own physical therapy for a spinal issue.
WATERFIELD: They rescheduled things and got us in.
HSU: Only this week did her colleagues start learning from their insurers that no claims after April 8 will be paid. Waterfield fears she’s in the same boat.
WATERFIELD: I’m afraid to call my insurance company.
HSU: She says her family’s probably racked up several thousand dollars in medical bills in recent weeks. Now, Jennifer Raulin knows for sure her insurance lapsed on April 8. Late last week, she finally got an email from the government about her benefits telling her so. Now she’s furious.
RAULIN: I get it. You don’t want us to work for the federal government. But it just feels like Department of Commerce is trying to hit us while we’re down.
HSU: She says she still hasn’t received the paperwork she needs to get on her husband’s insurance. What she’s been told is that she still has a small window to restore her coverage, paying 102% of the entire cost of her federal health care benefits. Without a job, she says, how could she afford that? Andrea Hsu, NPR News.
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