Health Care Reform: Many Young People Still Have No Insurance Under Obama Plan

Many young people between the ages of 26 and 30 still will have no health insurance when President Obama's health care law fully takes effect in 2014.

Extending health care to twenty-somethings is one of the signature accomplishments of Barack Obama's health care reform law.

Yet young adults continue to comprise the largest proportion of uninsured Americans.

Twenty-eight percent of Americans between the ages of 26 and 34 had no health insurance in 2010, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. That is nearly one-third more than the percentage of Americans between the ages of 35 and 44 without health insurance. (h/t SmartMoney.)

This number appears unlikely to decline until 2014, when nearly all Americans will be required to have health insurance under the new health care law--although as the Supreme Court heard arguments this week on the constitutionality of the health care law, that declined seemed far from certain.

If the law is overturned, so would one of its most significant achievements--the extension of coverage to 2.5 million 19- to 25-year-olds who are now covered by their parents' health care plans. A decision is expected in June.

What's keeping twenty-somethings uninsured?

At the age of 26, you're too old to qualify as a dependent on your parents' health insurance plan, despite being unemployed, in school, or working for a company that does not provide health insurance.

Young people also have the hardest time getting access to affordable care when they're entering the job market: many twenty-somethings are employed by small businesses, or have part-time, entry-level and freelance jobs that do not offer health care, according to the Department of Labor.

And health care is only getting more expensive. Americans' health care spending has tripled since 1990, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. American workers on average pay $4,000 toward the cost of family health coverage, according to a separate Kaiser report.

On top of this, young Americans are seeing their spending power diminish, since they often do not have the skills or experience to command higher wages as millions of unemployed Americans stay out of work. The average wage of college-educated men between the ages of 23 and 29 plunged 11 percent over the past decade, and the average wage of college-educated women of the same age fell 7.6 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

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Comments

[robinhood1]

05:11 PM on 03/29/2012

They would rather buy ipads and iphones instead.

[mogeorge]

09:52 AM on 03/30/2012

When my daughter got out of college she was turned down for insurance because she had Epstein-Barr Virus and took medicine for it. She has since been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (all part of the same virus probably) and takes a daily pill for that. She got a job with insurance eventually and hasn't missed a day of work in years thanks to her medicine. I have heard of cases where young graduates are turned down because they take anti-depressants. It is easy to blame young adults if you don't have the facts.

[robinhood1]

05:09 PM on 03/29/2012

Maybe when the broad middle class supports a national sales and services tax to pay for an extension of Medicare to all American residents, we will get a more comprehensive medical insurance system. In the meantime, we are engaged in a lot of buck passing. If you think the top two percent is going to pay your medical bills, think again.

[Social Construct]

10:02 AM on 03/29/2012

Pretty soon, we'll have more shamans waving tree branches over our sick bodies than medical doctors holding a stethoscope over us. The race to the bottom continues ....

[rtx47]

09:15 PM on 03/28/2012

How does not insisting "all have health insurance" (individual mandate of the healthcare law) signed by President Obama

square with

Ronald Reagan's law that all sick people must get care at doctors' office or hospital irrespective of their insurance or lack there-off or ability to pay.

[sunnydayz20118]

01:13 AM on 03/29/2012

Kindly cite the law (and the actual verbage) which states ALL sick people MUST get care at a Dr.'s office or hospital.

[illinoiswendy]

04:27 PM on 03/28/2012

Many young People have no interest in Insurance of any type.NONE as in ZERO then if you figure the RICH who don't carry Insurance because they pay cash.....You have your 15% uninsured

[Heavens777]

07:21 AM on 08/08/2012

"Many young People have no interest in Insurance of any type.NONE as in ZERO " ... YES because some of them have been waiting for the free ride so they wouldn't have to actually work hard enough to a. earn the health care or b. pay for it themselves.... ugh... how will anyone actually respect the people w/ a poor resume and riding on their parents healthcare till late 20's. If we keep this going for four more years we can maybe include our BFF's on our health care, our parents and maybe even
add pet insurance etc...