Final answer:
The claim is generally false, as The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) provides protections against immediate loss of health insurance during job changes by mandating insurance purchase and forbidding denial of coverage for preexisting conditions. Medicaid expansions in various states also address this issue for lower-income families.
Step-by-step explanation:
The statement that you will immediately lose your health insurance and may not be able to get new insurance right away when changing jobs is generally false due to protections like those included in The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA).
This law mandates that all Americans must purchase health insurance and prevents providers from denying coverage due to preexisting conditions. Additionally, many low-paying jobs do not offer health insurance, which led to approximately 31 million Americans being uninsured in 2020.
However, Medicaid expansions in many states during the 1980s and 1990s aimed to address this by including people earning up to 135% or even 185% of the poverty line, ensuring that children would not lose coverage if their parents worked. This is key in understanding the interaction between employment, health care coverage, and the poverty trap.