Health Care Reform good news

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

This came across my desk today. This is only part of the picture of what this provision of PPACA did. This article does not address the tax savings it brought to the residents of the 13 or so states that had already mandated this dependent coverage (including mine). They could cover their kids on their employer's plan, but had to pay Federal taxes (and in most cases, state income tax) on the value of that coverage. PPACA brought tremendous tax relief to them.


"More than 600,000 young adults covered by parents’ health plans under ACA

As of the first quarter of 2011, at least 637,000 young adults are getting coverage under their parents’ health plans as allowed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act (ACA), the Kaiser Family Foundation reported based on major insurers’ data. The ACA requires health insurance plans to allow young adults up to age 26 to be covered under their parents’ plans, even if the young adult is a full-time student, not living with or a dependent of the parent, or married.


The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had estimated that about 1.2 million young adults would enroll for coverage in 2011. The early numbers from insurers indicate that it could be much higher, according to Aaron Smith, executive director of the Young Invincibles, a Washington-based nonprofit group that advocates for young adults.


Although the dependent coverage provision went into effect Sept. 23, 2010, health plans were not required to adopt the change until the beginning of the next plan year, which for most plans was January 2011. However, some insurers voluntarily adopted the provision before they were required to do so.


Young adults have the highest uninsured rate of any age group—about 30%, which is thought to be because many work in jobs that do not provide coverage and cannot afford their own employer’s coverage, even if granted access.

For more information visit http://www.kff.org."

[lamp_shade]

1. 3 of those 600,000 are in my family (nieces/nephew).

[eridani]

2. That amounts to about 20% of that demographic.

The whole bill is a lot like a rescue boat that saves 20 people out of the 100 that are drowning. You really shouldn't be expecting the other 80 to stand up and cheer. On the other hand, I certainly don't want Republicans to put a hole in the boat.

I still am appalled whenever people on a Dem bulletin board stand up for the principle that people don't deserve health care unless they (or their parents) can afford to buy it for them.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

3. I would have preferred single payor but we don't have it

right now. I thought this was something that the "repeal it now" crowd should have pointed out to them. The bill did help this group.

I'm sorry that you took it as standing up "for the principle that people don't deserve health care unless they (or their parents) can afford to buy it for them." I certainly was not doing that. Not when I posted this nor when I spent a day volunteering at the NAFC Free Clinic in Hartford last year at the urinalysis station.

[eridani]

4. Well then, when you post something like this in the future--

--could you please add a statement to the effect that you are going to keep fighting until everyone has access to health care?

One of the reasons that HCR was such an electoral disaster in 2010 was that Dems could not defend it in terms of basic values. (The other two would be that few of the benefits were frontloaded--so that the direct experience of really large numbers of people could not counteract Repuke lies, and that Dems were too wussy about going after them on the issue that HCR was an attack on Medicare.)