Insurance protection for adult children won't come fast enough for some parents

Writing for Kaiser Health News, Michelle Andrews explores an important provision of the new health care law. "When Allison McMaster Young heard that the new health overhaul law would allow her and her husband to keep their 21-year-old son on their family health insurance policy until age 26, she breathed a sigh of relief. Alex will graduate from Fordham University on May 21. Under the terms of the family plan they have through her husband's job, he'll lose his coverage the very next day because he'll no longer be a full-time student. Keeping Alex on the family policy would be by far the simplest and most affordable way to keep him covered after graduating. But then Young went online and read the legislative language. The provision, she learned, won't become effective until Sept. 23, six months after enactment" (Andrews, 4/2). Read entire article.

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.