Politics
Obama Health care helping more young adults access health insurance
“From September 2010 to June 2011, coverage rose only among those adults affect by the policy,” said the HHS report. The National Center for Health Statistics has documented a broadly similar trend in its official publications, only it’s not nearly as dramatic.
Administration officials said those statistics did not focus on the change from calendar quarter to calendar quarter, as does the new HHS report. Instead, they pool data over longer time periods, and that has the effect of diluting the perceived impact of the law, officials said.
Traditionally, young adults have been more likely to be uninsured than any other age group.
Some are making the switch from school to work. Others are holding down low-wage jobs that don’t usually come with health care. And some, termed the “invincibles”, pass up job-based health insurance because they don’t think they’ll use it and would rather get extra money in their paychecks.
Other early coverage expansions in the health care law have not worked as well, including a special program for people with health problems turned away by private insurers. Many applicants found the premiums unaffordable.
Young adults are less expensive to cover than people who are middle-aged, and many companies have spread the extra premiums among their workers. Benefits consultant Delloite LLP has projected additional health plan costs in the range of 1 percent to 2 percent for covering young adults.
Before the health care overhaul, families with adult children faced a hodgepodge of policies. Some health plans only covered older children while they were full-time students. Others applied an age cutoff.
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.
