One of the new federal health reform protections scheduled to take effect later this year is expanded insurance coverage for young adults. As of Sept. 23, 2010, if your child is under 26 and unmarried, insurance plans must give you the option of adding insurance coverage for your child. Because this requirement does not technically go into effect until later this year, in many states children graduating from college or about to age out of their parents' plan could lose their coverage for a few months. The good news is that HHS has been working with insurance companies to close this gap, and several insurers have agreed to maintain coverage for these students. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has just issued two press releases announcing which insurers have agreed to do this and she is trying to get commitments from more. So far, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Kaiser Permanente, Humana, WellPoint, and United Healthcare are among the plans offering to continue coverage. Unfortunately, this does not appear to help young adults who have already lost coverage. They will have to wait until the law goes into effect in September.
For more information, you should check out:
- Recent blog post by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebellius.
- April 20th Press Release: "HHS Secretary on Growing List of Insurers That Will Provide Coverage for Young Adults under Age 26"
- April 19th Press Release: "HHS To Work With Insurers to Voluntarily Provide Coverage for Graduating College Seniors and Young Adults under Age Twenty-Six in Advance of September Start Date in New Law"
Other Resources on health reform:
For health news and health reform updates directly from the US Department of Health and Human Services, you can go to http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2010pres/04/20100420c.html.
To ask questions specifically about the new federal health reform law, you can go to http://healthreform.gov/
