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Congress weighing plight of people out of work, out of health insurance.

I October 1981, Judy Duperry lost her job at the General Motors Corp. assembly plant in Bristol, Conn. Last May, her unemployment insurance ran out. The part-time work she has found since then has renewed her eligibility for unemployment benefits, which should help pay the rent and put groceries on the table for a little while longer. But one of her biggest worries, Duperry told the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health and the Environment late last month, "is not being able to provide my family with adequate health care." Duperry, a divorced mother of two sons, said that the health insurance she received through GM was terminated Nov. 1. "I keep on hoping that no one in my family gets really sick," she said. "I just don't know what we would do then." The recession has made Duperry's plight commonplace. Of the 12 million jobless in December, 5.3 million had lost their employment-related health insurance, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) director Alice M. Rivlin said at the Jan. 24 hearing. When dependents of the unemployed are included, Rivlin said, the number jumped to 10.7 million. Nearly 90 per cent of non-farm workers receive health benefits paid in part or in full by their employer. Unless the government comes to the rescue of the unemployed a step that the CBO estimates could cost as much as $6 billion they have very few options. Most people who are recently out of work have enough assets and cash from unemployment benefits and perhaps parttime jobs and savings to make them ineligible for medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for the poor. On the other hand, they do not often have enough money to pay for costlier individual policies. Even if a plan offering minimum coverage at special group rates could be designed, the United Auto Workers (UAW) estimates, the cost would be at least SI00 a month well above the means of most unemployed families. A lucky few like Duperry may be able to continue under an employer-paid plan for an extra year, but they are a minority. Fully 50 per cent of the unemployed lose coverage within a month of being laid off, according to Labor Department statistics, and only 20 per cent can expect their coverage to continue for three months or