APNewsBreak: 2.5M young adults in US gain coverage

U.S. Health and Human Ser­vices Sec­re­tary Kath­leen Sebe­lius par­tic­i­pates in an round­table dis­cus­sion on health infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy and job cre­ation at Cuya­hoga Com­mu­nity Col­lege in Cleve­land. The Obama admin­is­tra­tion says the num­ber of young adults going with­out med­ical cov­er­age has shrunk by 2.5 mil­lion since the new health care law took effect. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Tony Dejak)

RICARDO

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — The num­ber of young adults in the U.S. lack­ing med­ical cov­er­age has shrunk by 2.5 mil­lion since the new health care over­haul law took effect, accord­ing to a new analy­sis the Obama admin­is­tra­tion is to release Wednesday.

That drop is 2½ times as large as the one indi­cated by pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment and pri­vate esti­mates from ear­lier this year, which showed about 1 mil­lion Amer­i­cans ages 19–25 had gained coverage.

Under the health over­haul, chil­dren can remain on their par­ents’ health insur­ance plans until they turn 26, and fam­i­lies have flocked to sign up young adults mak­ing the tran­si­tion to work in a chal­leng­ing eco­nomic envi­ron­ment. But the fate of Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s sig­na­ture domes­tic accom­plish­ment remains uncer­tain, with the Supreme Court sched­uled to hear a con­sti­tu­tional chal­lenge next year, and Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates vow­ing to repeal it.

“The increase in cov­er­age among 19– to 25-year-olds can be directly attrib­uted to the Afford­able Care Act’s new depen­dent cov­er­age pro­vi­sion,” said a draft report from the Health and Human Ser­vices Depart­ment. “Ini­tial gains from this pol­icy have con­tin­ued to grow as … stu­dents grad­u­ate from high school and col­lege.” A copy of the report was obtained by The Asso­ci­ated Press.

HHS Sec­re­tary Kath­leen Sebe­lius is sched­uled to release the find­ings Wednesday.

The health care law’s main push to cover the unin­sured doesn’t come until 2014. But the young adults’ pro­vi­sion took effect last fall. Most work­place health plans started car­ry­ing it out Jan. 1.

Tra­di­tion­ally, young adults were more likely to be unin­sured than any other age group.

Some are mak­ing the switch from school to work. Oth­ers are hold­ing down low-wage jobs that don’t usu­ally come with health care. And some — termed the “invin­ci­bles” — pass up job-based health insur­ance because they don’t think they’ll use it and would rather get extra money in their paychecks.

Using unpub­lished quar­terly sta­tis­tics from the government’s ongo­ing National Health Inter­view Sur­vey, ana­lysts in Sebe­lius’ pol­icy office deter­mined that nearly 36 per­cent of those age 19–25 were unin­sured in the third cal­en­dar quar­ter of 2010, before the law’s pro­vi­sion took effect.

That trans­lates to more than 10.5 mil­lion people.

By the sec­ond cal­en­dar quar­ter of 2011, the pro­por­tion of unin­sured young adults had dropped to a lit­tle over 27 per­cent, or about 8 mil­lion people.

The dif­fer­ence — nearly 2.5 mil­lion get­ting cov­er­age — can only be the result of the health care law, admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said, because the num­ber cov­ered by pub­lic pro­grams like Med­ic­aid went down slightly.

Over­all, nearly 30 mil­lion Amer­i­cans are between the ages of 19 to 25. For those who are lit­tle older, ages 26–35, the unin­sured rate went up dur­ing the same period.

Posted by AP News on Dec 14 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.