Keeping "kids" on your insurance until they are 26!?! WTF

I noticed one part of the Obamacare bill being trumpeted was that people can keep their kids on their health insurance until they are TWENTY SIX years old!!

What for?

At that point, "kids" have been legal adults for eight years.

I can understand a lower number like 22 perhaps. Time for someone to graduate high school and college with a bachelor's degree.

But 26?

After I graduated college (at 21), I ended up with a crappy job for years.

But I still managed to get my own health care insurance within a year.

Because not everyone happens to have a career by the time they're 21, that's why. I've still got another 6 or 7 years of school ahead of me, and I'll be making a max of 17k a year during that time, likely with few (if any) benefits. I still need my parents and I will for a long time.

Wow, Dayton actually makes a point that I agree with.

No offense but what are you doing? Doctor?

And while I did consider this, why give special consideration to young people just because they choose a profession that has longer education requirements?

With the economy being so crappy, those who do graduate at 22 aren't able to find decent jobs that provide health insurance, not to mention a living wage.

I graduated in May 2008 with a degree in accounting and didn't get a position with benefits until December 2009. Most of my peers with degrees in other fields are waiting tables or working retail, so they're still having to get help from their parents.

Honestly, it's all politics.

But seeing as a public option is likely within the next ten years, I think it's moot.

Boo fucking hoo. That's their problem to figure out on their own.

WTF? Okay, I give up. Can someone (anyone) explain the benefits of a college education? Even if you have a scholarship that pays most of it, the fact that you can't get a job is fucked up.

Talk about running a scam! :headhurts:Catch-22 at it's finest.....you "need" college to get a "good" job. Take out a loan....your "high paying" post-college career will make paying it off a snap. Oops-don't have a job (or at least one in your chosen field of study) then you better take more college.
Yeah, that's the ticket! These days a BA is like a HS Diploma was years ago. No, wait...an MA is like a HS diploma. Better get some graduate schooling. Oops.....now you are too old....we don't need you for our Underwater Basketweaving corporation. :headhurts:

I honestly cannot believe even MORE of our nation's finest young minds aren't running down to a military recruiting office. They are starving, underemployed + living at home while others their age are getting paid to learn and making great money.

Buffer zone between the job market and emerging high school graduates, and demonstration to prospective employers that you are fully willing to submit to an oppressive bureaucracy.

No offense.

But you sound like those British posters over at spacebattles who when questioned about Britains national health care system and other "welfare state" programs said

"I find it reassuring knowing that if things get bad the government will always be there for me".-paraphrased.

I'm 22, college educated but living the neoliberal dream without benefits. Most of the people I graduated with are doing the same. I'm all for it.

I do find it reassuring that we have social safety nets. I guess that just makes me a big 'ol commie.

I have no problem with a "safety net" for people who are disabled, handicapped, or have a TEMPORARY problem.

But it seems to me that there is a serious tendency for the "safety net" often become a "hammock".

And remember, most "safety" systems only work once.

For example, the rollover protection on a bulldozer is rated to protected the operator from the dozer rolling over ONLY ONCE.

Not again

and again

and again

and again

and again.

A lot of our policies subsidize spawning.

This policy simply adds dependence on others as a subset of the behavior we will subsidize in the future. Common sense says that future generation will be a smidgen less capable of taking care of and providing for themselves. But by the time the future generations are actually ready to spawn their own round, "kids" could include a group with 30 year-olds. It seems likely that a quality of Dickyness in our "young adults" may be a less exceptional phenomenon than today.

I'm pretty sure full-time students were always covered as they are still dependents on parents, so the major policy effect would be that workers and unemployed will also get to suckle on the parental teet longer, by force of government edict. So since price will be determined by government factors instead of demand, expect everyone to pay for the new subsidy, just a little bit more sand in the gears.

Amidst all the wrong signals we're broadcasting to future workers, this one's a minor misalignment, a small crevice in contrast to imbalances the size of the canyons we've seen the past few decades, particularly against the backdrop of the Grand Canyon we're witnessing playing out the past year.

1) No one's forcing anyone to keep their kids on their insurance until age 26;

2) The insurance companies aren't, by this reform measure, regulated per se as to how much they can charge to keep an older child on a family policy;

3) People in the age range 18-26 generally fall into one of three categories: those with preexisting conditions who wouldn't be able to get insurance outside of family policies, pregnant women, and those who are dirt-cheap to insure. The former two you really want to have insurance from a policy viewpoint; the latter, which forms the bulk of the 18-26 population, is likely to see administrative costs form such a high portion of the costs of an individual policy that an individual policy makes no sense to buy, and access to a family plan keeps down administrative costs.

So basically allowing adult children to remain on family policies allows adult children who most need insurance and are otherwise uninsurable to have access to insurance, and for other adult children it's a win/win policy that, by keeping administrative costs down, makes for cheaper insurance that's more profitable to the insurer.

Of course none of this would be necessary if the Democrats hadn't indicated their extreme retardation by delaying implementation of the mandate/subsidy scheme until 2014 solely in order to keep the projected cost for the first decade under a trillion dollars. From a policy viewpoint that delay makes less than no sense at all, and the need to rube goldberg stopgap measures in the meanwhile is just one reason why that's so.

I'm pretty sure the idea is to make sure there is no lapse in coverage, but since insurance companies can't really turn anyone down anymore for something like that, it's kind of pointless. To be fair, some insurance companies were already offering to keep dependents under the parents' coverage until they were 26, like Blue Cross & Blue Shield, for example.

I don't see the big deal. Most kids are 18 when they graduate HS, and 4 years of college will take them to 22. If they happen to miss a couple of semesters due to:
a) illness/injury,
b) Co-op jobs/internships,
c) too much partying/falling behind in classes,
then you're easily talking 23-24 years old before they get out of college w/ a BS/BA degree. That doesn't even take into account those pursuing a higher-level degree. IIRC, most insurance companies already allow children up to age 23 on their parents' policies, so what's 3 more years?!? Given the sad state of the economy, and the fact that more and more companies are scrapping bennies for workers, it's not unreasonable to expect that it might take a few more years for these young adults to find a job w/ benefits.

Indeed. I can see how it makes a lot of business sense to do this as a private company - I suspect just the uptick in customer loyalty (i.e. the kid eventually buys from the same company as the parents) is enough to justify it.

It's just like a lot of other things - if the market creates a demand for it, it will happen - without the need for the government to demand it.

Because we don't like to be shot at, and the odds of that happening are, with all the crap going on, pretty high. Whether it's our duty to serve is an entirely different argument--based on the reasons you've just given, I think I can take grad school a little longer if it means I get to do what will make me enjoy my life.

Now, before you dump on absolutely everyone who may share my viewpoint, I know of at least a few people who went to college, got a B.S. (or even a law degree), and then joined up. It's probably going to be the next big thing--joining the military because you can't find a job any other way. Seems like a fine way to keep military spending up, since nobody every asks where that money is coming from.

Oh yeah. just a few more years.

Hell, why not wait until their parents are dead?

And whatever happened to people WORKING while they are in college?

And don't give me this bull about the "10% unemployment rate".

Back in the early 1980s, the unemployment rate was even higher and two of my sisters (in college at that time) and their friends and classmates were all working during college.

There is always paying work to be done.

It might not be what you want or the least bit appealing but there is work.

Of course there's always work. But not work that offers health insurance. Not work that pays enough for the kid to buy health insurance. And since the biggest threat to healthy kids is injury, on or off the job...

Because the world is a different place than when you went to college? Because college is a much more competitive place than when you were there? Because if you choose to attend a private university, you'll never be able to work enough hours to pay for your tuition as you go AND get any studying done? Because the whole point of getting the education is for it to be worthwhile enough that you can pay the loans off afterward because you worked hard enough at school to compete your way into a good job?

I see students at my university take courses two or three times because they're trying to take six or seven courses in the same semester AND work a half-time job. How is that efficient? How is that being fiscally responsible? I'm sorry, but it's my opinion that college should be a full-time job (with obvious exceptions--I'm not telling 40-year old mothers of three to quit everything just so they can finish a degree in four years).

Methinks you're out of touch, although you have a lot in common with many students I see who think a BS is a commodity rather than anything more useful.

Somehow I knew my choice of words wasn't going to work out there.

Silly me.

I thought education was its own reward. Not just part of the checklist to help you find a better job.

But yeah, I guess I'm out of touch. I went to a public university with a huge academic scholarship and received my B.S.B.A. in three years.

Two of my sisters did as well.

Yeah the ways things are it doesn't matter if they don't have it. Once they get sick they can buy it and the insurance company will be forced to pay for it.

There is no problem with a private company and it's customers doing things. The problem lays in when the government forces both sides to do something.

Hmmm . . . I hadn't thought of this one. Why not have a "family" insurance plan, with no drop-off requirement for children? Starts out with Mom & Dad paying the premiums, kids are covered, and as the kids start earning income they can start paying into the premiums as well, if they want. Why require them to drop off the parent's plan if they're happy with it? They just take over paying for it and keep everything else the same. Portable insurance like this should be one of the goals of "reform".

Guess what.

Too fucking bad. Most 'normal' kids don't suck of our parents tit till we're 26.

If you couldn't afford post secondary to begin with, and your parents only had a set amount of money put away maybe you should have taken a job for a couple years to save up money. And after that there are student loans.

That's a good idea actually but with this new law in place it will never happen.

Excellent idea. Family physician has the kids' charts on file, is aware of any familial predispositions. No need to change doctors and generate another mountain of paperwork.

Not a bad idea.

But I don't think that is what this law involves.

And even if it is a good idea, having the govt. REQUIRE it is BAD idea.