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If Affordable Care Act protections for pre-existing condition coverage are no longer available, the coronavirus pandemic would leave many Americans - a disproportionate number of whom are people of color - without health insurance, a new Oregon Health & Science University study indicates.
Published in the
Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine, the study's findings reveal a third of the more than 7,500 COVID-19 patients who received care at U.S. community health centers between March and October 2020 did not have a pre-existing condition prior to contracting the novel coronavirus.
People of color made up at a significant portion of the COVID-19 patients studied: 51 percent were non-Hispanic Asian, 36 percent Hispanic, and 28 percent non-Hispanic Black. In comparison, the U.S. Census reports America's 2019 population was about 5.9 percent Asian alone, 18.5 percent Hispanic, and 13.4 percent Black alone.