On Thursday, six months after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed through the Senate, millions of young adults nationwide became eligible to stay on their parents’ insurance plans until they reach the age of 26.
The act allows up to 2.4 million young adults, including 196,000 Californians, to remain insured longer than insurers typically provide for.
Students who were previously ineligible for their parents’ health insurance will now have the possibility of returning to their family provider with this new law. Consequently, these students could waive the Student Health Insurance Plan currently provided by the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center to all registered students.
Although the law took hold on Thursday, if families do not have insurance policies with open enrollment, they will have to wait until their policy anniversary date to add their older children back onto their plans, according to Barbara Rabinowitz, insurance coordinator for the Ashe Center.
In the same way some families may have to wait to add older children back onto their insurance plans, Rabinowitz said the effects the legislation has on the Student Health Insurance Plan will not be visible, if at all, until the beginning of the winter and spring terms, for undergraduate and graduate students, respectively.
Regardless of whether students decide to waive SHIP, the option young adults have to remain on their parents’ plans is a great opportunity, said Scott Arno, a graduate student in neurology and committee chair of the Student Health Advisory Committee.
“It is a good thing because students are going to have more options,” Arno said.
He noted that of the 25,000 students covered by SHIP and the Graduate Student Health Insurance Plan, those who are going to waive and opt out likely have done so already.
While SHIP and GSHIP cover all registered students, before Thursday, national health care plans usually removed children from plans when they reached 19.
With the new plan, young adults are allowed to remain on or be reinstated to their parents whether or not the children are married, living with their parents, in school or financially independent.
According to HealthCare.gov, a website managed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, young adults can also receive coverage under their parents’ plans even if they are eligible for coverage through their employer, unless the group coverage is a “grandfathered” group plan that is exempt from the changes incurred by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
Other aspects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that went into effect on Thursday include the elimination of insurers imposing lifetime limits on benefits, the regulation of annual limits, the elimination of pre-existing condition exclusions for children and the improvement of consumer assistance among other provisions making it easier for plan holders to appeal their claims.
But according to Rabinowitz, although this newly instated provision affects college-level adults, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is focused on corporations and almost completely neglects student health concerns. Even so, Rabinowitz said the goal of the Ashe Center will remain the same.
“Our goal is to keep students healthy,” she said. “(We want to see them) succeed in their studies and make them successful at UCLA and beyond.”