CNN Special Report S2021E11 - The Price We Paid: The Economic Cost of Covid

CNN Correspondent Ed Lavandera investigates the nation's unemployment insurance program when Americans need it the most. The financial trauma caused by the Great Depression moved the United States to action in 1935. No tax-abiding American would suffer such destitution under the nation's new unemployment insurance program. Through personal stories, Lavandera explores the reliability of America's most important economic safety net. 

CNN travels to Kentucky to explore this governmental service's systemic issues through conversations with politicians across the aisle, local reporters, the state auditor, and former state workers. More importantly, Lavandera meets with Americans who have lost nearly everything. At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, almost 22 million Americans lost their job, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics. Was America's financial lifeline, the unemployment insurance program, there when its citizens needed it the most?