May 28 2010
NPR: The new health law's requirement that young adults be able to remain on their parents' health plans until they turn 26, is raising some questions from hopeful parents: "when exactly the new benefit begins, who exactly is eligible and who decides." But the answer to all those is: "It depends. ... the decision about when to start the new benefit is being made by lots of different players in the health system. For example, many health insurance companies have decided to begin offering the coverage to graduating college students in June. That's earlier than the law requires. But for most people with insurance at work, it's not the insurance company that decides what their benefits are. It's the employer," because the companies are self-insured.
"[H]ealth plans are required to start offering coverage to young adults who are no longer students starting on the first policy renewal date after Sept. 23. For many plans, that will mean Jan. 1 of next year. That will leave a multimonth gap for a lot of graduating college seniors" (Rovner, 5/27).
 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.
|