A bit of good news on marital status in health reform
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We confirmed one piece of good news today: adult children won’t be kicked off their parents’ health plans just because they get married! Over the past few years, many states have required insurance companies to let unmarried adult children stay on their parents’ plans up to a certain age (ranging from 24 to 29), but most states allowed the twenty-somethings’ insurance to be terminated as soon as they got married. This has been a source of poignant entreaties from young lovers barred from the alter by illness. Now, as the New York Times reports,
Starting in September, adult children younger than 26 can be added to their parent’s health policy. Some plans already extend coverage to adult dependents as long as they are full-time students. Although Health and Human Services still must announce the exact eligibility requirements, Congress deleted a restriction related to marital status.
“We may see a loosening of requirements around who qualifies as a dependent child,” said Jennifer Tolbert, associate director of the Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “When they removed the requirement that a dependent child didn’t have to be unmarried, that was a signal to say, ‘We want this to a apply to a larger group.’ ”
This was so unexpected that we actually phoned the Kaiser Family Foundation for confirmation – and got it! KFF’s Chris Lee says that the reconciliation bill does permit married adult children to stay on their parents’ plans (however, it does not allow the adult child’s child (the plan holder’s grandchild) to be on that plan, and probably does not allow coverage the adult child’s spouse either).
