Category Archives: health

Obamacare working for young adults

Posted on May 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

The provision of the health care law signed by Obama in 2010 that permits young adults under 26 to remain on their parents’ health insurance program resulted in at least 600,000 newly insured Americans during the first quarter of 2011, according to a report in Forbes. This is great news, as this age group is by far the most underinsured in the country.

It’s also good news for insurance companies, as Rick Unger in Forbes points out, because it’s adding some necessary “young blood” to the insurance pool. Young adults are healthier than those up the age chain, so their premiums can help pay for the health care of older and sicker Americans.

It’s also good for those of us who pay a health insurance premium every month. As Ungar writes, “The more healthy people available to pay for those in the pool who are ill (translation: older people), the better the system works and the lower our premium charges should go.”

In addition, all those uninsured young people who break their leg skiing or crash their messenger bike will now be able to pay that ER bill, which means the fees won’t get passed up the chain to the rest of those in the insurance pool.

If you’re a young adult and still not covered, the “Young Invincibles’s” site is a great place to start. In a nutshell, if you’re under age 26 and lack health insurance (if you’re unemployed or your employer doesn’t offer it), you can enroll in health insurance under your parents’ plan. There’s caveats of course, but the Young Invincibles site offers a toolkit to help young people get started.

I downloaded some information from the toolkit for a young person in ILLINOIS (each state will differ slightly), and here’s what it said:

Although nearly all young adults up to the age of 26 can now join their parent’s insurance, there are a few exceptions you need to know:

  • If you are eligible for your own insurance through an employer, you may not be eligible to join a parent’s plan. You should check with your parent’s employer about this.
  • Your parent’s plan must already offer coverage for dependent children.
  •  Some plans don’t have to implement the new requirement until later this year, but all eligible plans must allow you to join before September 23, 2011.
  •  The extension is not being enforced for “retiree-only” plans, so be sure to find out what kind of plan your parent has.
  • Some states mandate coverage beyond the 26th birthday. In Illinois, the dependent coverage law extends coverage to young adults up to the age of 30, but has some significant restrictions. Current state law only requires a family plan to offer coverage to young adults who are military veterans, unmarried, and remain residents of IL. The state law also does not apply to many large employers that are self-insured, while the federal law applies to all employers offering family plans. So if you are age 26 or older, but under age 30, you can still access coverage from your parent’s plan if you meet those eligibility criteria.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in health, parents

Tagged , ,

The number of uninsured keeps rising

Posted on November 17, 2010 | Leave a comment

The CDC is out with new data on the rising number of uninsured Americans. The message in a nutshell: 60 million (nearly one in five of us Americans) went without health insurance at some point in 2009. And this problem touches us all. The ranks of the uninsured are not just the poor (in fact, they and the elderly have a fairly decent safety net). It’s the near-poor, the working poor, and the middle class who are doing without. In fact, more near-poor families (aged 18-64) are uninsured (44%) than insured (35%).

You can see the erosion in job quality in this fact: In 1997, 53% of the near poor were insured. Today, 35%.  As we’ve shifted to an economy where jobs are more “nimble” (meaning that employers do not have the vested interested in their workforce they once did), and where benefits are becoming a clear divider between the haves and the have-nots, the numbers of uninsured rises–even among those who have a job.

I’m not blaming scrooge-like employers (completely). The costs of covering workers are astronomical. They’re so high that they’re making our companies less competitive on the global playing field. And that trickles down to workers.

Unfortunately, while the effects of these high costs trickle down and touch everyone, the trickle tends to pool at the bottom in a puddle of insecurity. It is the workers with the weakest foundations (in this case education) who work the hardest for the least money and security.

Look at the differences  between those with the least and the most education. More than three times as many high school dropouts (28%) are uninsured as college grads (8%). Twice as many of those with just a high school degree are uninsured than those with a college degree (either two or four-year).  You can see right there the shaky ground that young people without higher education face in this economy.The jobs that they can find are cut-throat, low-paid, and insecure. Just read Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Nickled and Dimed” to get a feel.

But increasingly, it’s not just those with the least education feeling the pain. Many in the solid middle class are uninsured as well. About one in three middle-income adults aged 18-64 went without health insurance during some part of 2009. And yet we balk at a national health care plan that can ease this burden for millions. I don’t get it.

Young adults feel this effect the most, since they’re the new hires, without much clout or seniority to bargain for better conditions. The Network on Transitions to Adulthood (where I was the communications director) did a study [pdf] in 2005  and found that young adults have the highest uninsured rates. Nearly half of those 18-34 were uninsured in 2005. They get this lucky prize because their jobs are the least steady.  The new CDC data finds similar trends. It looks at a younger age group, but still finds that the share uninsured at the time of interview was highest among those aged 18-24 (31.4%).

On average, the Network found that young adults go without insurance for 16 months. Men are more likely to be uninsured than women (often because they rely less on public insurance programs like Medicaid). Over any two-year period, more than one-half of all young men between age 18 and 25 (and two-thirds between ages 21 and 23) will be uninsured. That’s a lot of risk. Most people say, well sure, but young adults are generally healthy. True, but they are also the most likely to do stupid stuff and end up in the hospital. They’re the most accident-prone in their early 20s (think car accidents), and they’re also increasingly likely to have chronic conditions like asthma. A researcher in charge of a large national survey on young people’s health (AdHealth) finds a strong and unprecedented decline in health during the transition to young adulthood in the current generation.

The new health care law will hopefully help ease this trend for all Americans. It should be particularly helpful to young adults. Being able to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26 will be a godsend to many–if their parents have insurance, that is.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in health, work and earnings

Tagged ,

Young adult health insurance option kicks in today

Posted on September 23, 2010 | 4 Comments

Today’s the day—young adults under age 26 can return to their parents’ health insurance coverage and avoid those unexpected out-of-pocket bills when they break their wrist playing touch football or just need to refill the asthma inhaler.

I was in Michigan awhile back on a short vacation and talking with some fellow hotel guests over a glass of wine. The conversation turned to health care, and the mother claimed that parents were forced to cover their children now. Just another bit of misinformation floating around out there. No one is forced to cover their young adult children, but insurance providers are required to offer parents the option of re-enrolling their young adult children (if they’re under age 26) in their family health care plan at the next open-enrollment period (probably in January for most plans).

If you want to find out the real story, check out Young Invincibles. Their website is chock full of great information, personal stories, and tools to help families and young people figure out which option is right for them– including this great tool. Parents and young adults can answer a set of 3-4 questions leading to a personally tailored set of options. Very cool.

Here’s more detailed information for parents on the new requirements and your employer’s responsibilities.

And here’s an important caveat–parents have a 30-day window to re-enroll their kids in this plan. The clock starts ticking at the start of your plan’s next open enrollment. Insurance companies may try to slip in the notice of the open enrollment period with a bunch of other paper, so be alert (or better yet, ask your employer when the enrollment dates are). If you miss the window, you’ll have to wait until next year.

Also—your insurance must charge the same to cover your adult child as they would to cover any younger child. No discrimination allowed. Some states already have laws that require insurers to go beyond age 26 for dependent coverage. In those states, you will likely be able to cover your child on your plan even beyond their age 26. Find out the laws in your state.

Here’s an overview of the law in case you missed it:

The dependent coverage expansion allows your adult children under age 26 to stay on your employer-provided or private health insurance plan.

  • Your children can be covered even if they are married or have a child, but their spouses and children cannot be covered under your plan.
  • To qualify for coverage through your plan, adult children must not be eligible for another employer-sponsored insurance plan through their employer or spouse.
  • Your adult children are eligible for your health insurance plan whether or not they are a student and regardless of whether they file taxes independently (this is a big change from the previous state laws.)

Your adult children are eligible to enroll on your insurance at the start of your plan’s next open enrollment period beginning on or after September 23, 2010. For most employer-based insurance, that will be on January 1, 2011. But it could be later. Talk to your employer about the start date at your workplace.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in health, millennials

Tagged , , ,