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Policies of the ACA: Young Adults on their Parents' Plan

Should parents be able to enroll their children under the age of 26?

  • Total voters
    26
lpast said:
Heres how I feel about this..I think 26 yrs old is past the age of adult responsiblity. The responsibility to be providing for yourself, but im willing to go halfway and say ok parents can keep their offspring enrolled on their health insurance until they are 22 or 23 and IN COLLEGE.
Not cover them to lay around the house and play Xbox..or insure them for working full time. If they are still in school full time or HANDICAPPED..Im good till 23. Twenty Six is overkill and making mommy daddy nannies for an adult person
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Bingo. We used to have a word for "children" who were 26 years old. We called them "Adults".
 
cpwill said:
The particulars of health insurance plans should be up to the customer and provider to hammer out between them. If they want to add in a college student at a cost acceptable to both? Sure. Mandate it? No.
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In theory that sounds nice, but in reality the bargaining positions between individuals and health insurance companies are so unequal that what that really means is just "let the insurance companies decide".
 
teamosil said:
It's weird that 5 of you have voted against it, but so far nobody has managed to come up with anything it hurts.
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Maybe because no one knows for sure what will happens to rates. Personally, someone who is 26 is not a kid. The ACA should have found a way for "kids' over 21 to afford health care and not on the backs of the parents.. What about those "kids" whos parents won't cover them? Where is there affordable health care. Maybe the parents can't afford it anymore. The "kids" are past the age of being adults.

Can you explain the age 26? As I asked before, why not 30, or 50 or lifetime? Just ride on your parents insurance till they die.
(yes I know its a parents option and not manditory).
 
NO. I would suggest that the cut-off point should be 22. At 18 you graduate high school. By 22 you should by done with a Bachelor's Degree and capable of employment with your own health insurance. If you're going on to a Master's Degree or more, then it's up to you to find a way to provide for your own insurance.
 
mike2810 said:
Maybe because no one knows for sure what will happens to rates.
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Well, I haven't heard any argument why it would make them higher. If anything, it would make them lower for family plans because people between 18 and 26 typically have lower health care costs than people between 0 and 18.

mike2810 said:
Personally, someone who is 26 is not a kid. The ACA should have found a way for "kids' over 21 to afford health care and not on the backs of the parents.. What about those "kids" whos parents won't cover them? Where is there affordable health care. Maybe the parents can't afford it anymore. The "kids" are past the age of being adults.

Can you explain the age 26? As I asked before, why not 30, or 50 or lifetime? Just ride on your parents insurance till they die.
(yes I know its a parents option and not manditory).
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I fundamentally agree with the argument that the real problem is the cost of health care in this country. This is a hack to treat the symptom, not the cause. The only ways I am aware of that has worked anywhere in the world to control health care costs has been a public option or a single payer. IMO until we implement one of them, the costs will continue to shoot up, and yeah, that the central issue that we need to tackle.

Here is the really worrisome thing. From the experiences of other countries, it appears that implementing single payer or a public option doesn't lower costs, it stops costs from rising. What that means is that the later a country enacts it, the higher their medical costs are. Countries that enacted it 20 years ago have health care costs not that much higher than they were 20 years ago, where countries that enacted it 10 years ago have much higher costs than those countries, but much lower than countries who haven't enacted it yet. So, if we dilly dally a lot longer it may well be too late to keep costs at a feasible level.
 
My thoughts are this is not a matter for law. At all.

If companies want to sell insurance plans to people that cover one's children long, long after they reach adulthood, they should do so. If not, they should not have to.


In one sense, it's easy money; these are the folks that don't have a lot of health problems generally.
 
JayDubya said:
If companies want to sell insurance plans to people that cover one's children long, long after they reach adulthood, they should do so. If not, they should not have to.
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Why are corporations so much more important to libertarians than people? Fundamentally that's what I don't get about libertarianism. The "freedom" of a corporation is meaningless. Corporations aren't people. They don't have emotions. Why not prioritize people's interests more highly than the interests of corporations?
 
Yeah, because people don't own companies and set policy. Only space aliens and AI do. :roll:
 
JayDubya said:
Yeah, because people don't own companies and set policy. Only space aliens and AI do. :roll:
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So it's just about the profits of investors? Why are the profits of investors more important to you than other interests such as the economic situation of non-investors and whatnot? Besides, are you so sure that the profits of investors are best maximized by letting corporations do whatever they want?
 
teamosil said:
So it's just about the profits of investors?
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No, it's about the freedom of all people, including those running companies. The state has no right and no lawful authority to compel an insurer to sell you a policy. It's deplorable. It's tyrannical.
 
i think past 21, children should be allowed to stay on their parent's insurance, but for a fee. Say, $100 per child.
 
JayDubya said:
My thoughts are this is not a matter for law. At all.

If companies want to sell insurance plans to people that cover one's children long, long after they reach adulthood, they should do so. If not, they should not have to.

nt

In one sense, it's easy money; these are the folks that don't have a lot of health problems generally.
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Heh now that you mention it your right...its a windfall for the insurance companies...they get to recieve premiums they wouldnt have and for a group of people that use the least amount of health insurance.....good point
 
Phys251 said:
(Note: THIS IS NOT A QUESTION ABOUT THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT. THIS IS A QUESTION ABOUT ONE SPECIFIC COMPONENT.)

One of the many policies created by the Affordable Care Act was the ability of parents to enroll their children on their health insurance plan up to the age of 26.

NOT including your position on the ACA as a whole, do you support this SPECIFIC policy or not? I.e., were health care reform completely scrapped, and this one proposal came as a stand-alone bill, would you support it or not?
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Sure, I support it. Why not?
 
JayDubya said:
No, it's about the freedom of all people, including those running companies. The state has no right and no lawful authority to compel an insurer to sell you a policy. It's deplorable. It's tyrannical.
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So when you weigh the freedom of say a million people between 18 and 26 who lack the freedom to go to the doctor against the "freedom" to make more profits for some investors, why does the "freedom" to make more profits outweigh?

I mean, I know the slogan- maximizing profits you call a "right" and you don't call health care a "right". But, that's just another way of stating your conclusion that investor profits are inherently more important than people getting health care. What I'm trying to get at is WHY you think that is so?
 
teamosil said:
In theory that sounds nice, but in reality the bargaining positions between individuals and health insurance companies are so unequal that what that really means is just "let the insurance companies decide".
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To where it exists (and it does), that is due to government restrictions which are unnecessary, and government tax structures which are actively harmful. Equalize the treatment of employer v individually purchased health insurance and break the power of the states to tilt the market to favored companies and watch a market develop. We'll have geckos with british accents begging us not to go to Flo's website to see all the options the competition has.
 
teamosil said:
So when you weigh the freedom of say a million people between 18 and 26 who lack the freedom to go to the doctor against the "freedom" to make more profits for some investors, why does the "freedom" to make more profits outweigh?
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They lack the freedom to go to a doctor? who is stopping them? give me their names - I shall report these kidnappers to the police!
 
cpwill said:
To where it exists (and it does), that is due to government restrictions which are unnecessary, and government tax structures which are actively harmful. Equalize the treatment of employer v individually purchased health insurance and break the power of the states to tilt the market to favored companies and watch a market develop. We'll have geckos with british accents begging us not to go to Flo's website to see all the options the competition has.
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I agree that the imbalance between employer plans and individual plans is a serious problem.

But, competition works better in some markets than others. Health care is one where it inherently works poorly. It is too complicated and too arbitrary to really make a fully informed decision. There are hundreds of thousands of possible treatments, like 99% of which the typical consumer has never even heard of. Trying to weight various plans based on the probability that you will need each treatment and which ones they cover and whatnot just isn't realistic. So, I'm not saying there should not be competition. There should be. IMO we should have both public and private entities competing for the business. But regulation is definitely appropriate in such a complicated market.
 
cpwill said:
They lack the freedom to go to a doctor? who is stopping them? give me their names - I shall report these kidnappers to the police!
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You're making a joke about it, but obviously it is a massive and very real issue for the people in that situation.
 
teamosil said:
So when you weigh the freedom of say a million people between 18 and 26 who lack the freedom to go to the doctor against the "freedom" to make more profits for some investors, why does the "freedom" to make more profits outweigh?
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There's nothing to balance on those scales.

There's the actual freedom, to choose to sell what you want to customers who then choose to buy what you are selling or not - freedom of contract, freedom of choice...


... and then there's this notion that others can compel you to sell something to them whether you want to or not, and / or make other people pay for it. Which is as far from freedom as is possible.
 
the fact that this is even necessary at all is yet another symptom of our failing employer-based delivery system.

but, given our absolute refusal to change this ridiculous and inefficient system, i vote yes. given the lousy job market, i'd raise the age even higher. after all, the insurance companies want people in this age group covered because they pay in more than they take out in care, and the cashier jobs that we are offering this entire generation don't offer health insurance.
 
JayDubya said:
There's nothing to balance on those scales.

There's the actual freedom, to choose to sell what you want to customers who then choose to buy what you are selling or not - freedom of contract, freedom of choice...


... and then there's this notion that others can compel you to sell something to them whether you want to or not, and / or make other people pay for it. Which is as far from freedom as is possible.
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I mean, you're only looking at one side of the coin. You're saying that the insurance companies are less free to maximize their profits. But what about the other side of the coin- the people? Isn't somebody who has the choice to see a doctor when they're sick more free than the person who doesn't have that choice?
 
teamosil said:
I agree that the imbalance between employer plans and individual plans is a serious problem.

But, competition works better in some markets than others. Health care is one where it inherently works poorly. It is too complicated and too arbitrary to really make a fully informed decision
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this is incorrect - as the success of HSA's have demonstrated.
 
teamosil said:
You're making a joke about it, but obviously it is a massive and very real issue for the people in that situation.
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no it's not. either they make enough money to take on payment, or they don't and rate medicaid. more likely they are lazy and/or generally uninformed. Regardless, no one is stopping them from seeing a doctor.
 
teamosil said:
I mean, you're only looking at one side of the coin.
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There only is one side of this coin.

The law doesn't somehow stop people from going to the doctor. If you can't pay the doctor, making someone else pay the doctor for you and / or making the doctor work perform the task anyway are both examples of using the law to reduce net freedom.

So we're not weighing the value of different freedoms. We're weighing freedom versus coercion.
 
Dion said:
Why ... my sons are in college and they could not afford a private policy. If the children were on the family policy ...whether students or in entry level jobs most cannot afford to buy insurance and therefore would be uninsured and if a catastrophic accident occurs the tax payers would have this burden of millions of uninsured.

If a family can continue this family policy to cover the children as they secure their futures in college, entry level jobs or as an apprentice why not have them insured?

Why would any American citizen oppose this ... having more young Americans insured and being responsible as a family group?

The young adults that do not go to school that begin entry level work or the few that start a business cannot afford hundreds each month to open a new policy. This provision helps families and saves billions in tax dollars as there would simply be uninsured young adults and the unfortunate percentage that have a catastrophic incident have coverage now ...instead of landing comatose or paraplegic after an MVA and then on medicaid and burdening the tax payers further.

Think critically people!
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This ^ ........QFT
 
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