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The percentage of young American adults between the ages of 18-25 without health insurance decreased over the past year, while the percentage of adults over 26 without insurance increased, according to Gallup.
The main reason young adults are bucking the overall trend is that a provision in the Affordable Care Act allowed individuals under the age of 27 to remain on their parents’ insurance plan. It is one of the better parts of the law and one of the few provisions in the overall law that has already gone into effect instead of waiting until 2014.
While that provision has resulted in tens of thousands more young adults having coverage, overall that improvement has not been large enough to make up for the steady loss of insurance coverage due to high unemployment and rising insurance premiums. The percentage of Americans without insurance has continued to climb since the passage of the law and is now at 17.4 percent among all Americans.
In sharp contrast, notice how consistently few Americans over 65 lack health insurance; most are covered by Medicare or other government-sponsored health plans. This is a reminder that if you want everyone in America to have health insurance, the cheapest and most effective way to achieve it is simple: just have the government directly provide everyone with insurance/coverage through a single-payer system.
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If ACA is responsible, how come the trend has been heading up since 1/08, and what does it look like bef that tee-insy bit of history.
I’m a recent graduate (May 2011), and I’m one of the people who has benefited from this provision. Good thing, too, considering I needed surgery September 1st on my knee (torn meniscus). If it hadn’t passed, I probably would have taken classes at a community college until I got a job of my own so I could remain a “student.” Oh, yeah, I’m still unemployed (degree in aerospace engineering, minors in math and women’s/gender studies).
Oopsie. Read the chart wrong. Was looking at the 26-64 year olds line and inverting the Q. Talk about brain farts.
So I’ll pose a diff Q. Aren’t there more peeps 26-64 than 18-25. And aren’t the 18-25ers less in need of med treatment than 26-64ers. So wouldn’t ACA, by your interp Jon be a net negative.
That’s the same question I had. Supporters say that insurers began offering young adult coverage early, in anticipation of the ACA. That may be true, but it doesn’t explain all the data. One thing that’s kind of weird is that adult children of government employees make up a disproportionate chunk. I’m not sure why that is. Another thing is that when the economy turns bad college enrollment goes up and full-time students are generally required to have health insurance. Finally more kids are on medicaid, which normally continues until age 19, and the federal government now allows states to keep foster kids on medicaid until age 21. All of those little things are contributing to improvement too. And I’m not denying it’s an improvement. Just remember this is a no-brainer that would have been part of any health reform plan. No reason to mandate people buy crappy private insurance to get young adults covered.
He doesn’t say, only that those without insurance has climbed to 17.4 %, I suppose that may have something to do with unemployment or the high cost of insurance
The “he” in question being Jon Walker? if he’s going to post about polls, shouldn’t he post about the whole poll and put it in context. But I digress…
Is anyone watching this Troy Davis travesty?
Well yeah, the total number of uninsured has increased significantly because of the recession. The question is, is the ACA youth coverage provision responsible for the opposite trend in those <25?
I don’t know but this is all the data in the Gallup graph link.
?? the trend is down from 28 % to 24.2%.
All sanity has gone out the window. I just hope the momentum for change won’t evaporate after today. I’ve been a DP activist since the 80s, and the lack of sustained interest is our major obstacle.
oops misunderstood. I don’t know the answer to that but it is implicit in the reduction., I suppose.
I don’t understand how you execute someone when 7 out of 9 eyewitnesses recant. At least have a stay until we all understand what is going on.
Because it’s Georgia.
Let’s outsource our health care system to Canada. We’d get universal coverage AND lower costs. Oh, and the whores in DC wouldn’t get their campaign donations (blood money) from pharma, AHIP, the docs, etc. Tough shit.
Ohio allowed young adults to be covered by parent’s health insurance up to the age of 26 long before federal HCR.
Over 27? You don’t even have to be sick. “Die and die quickly.”
Having adult children on their parents insurance is certainly a relief for many, but a temporary one. Like so many of this administration’s measures, it seems designed to keep all but the wealthiest of us in a permanent state of anxiety – a year or two of relative security, during which kids worry that they won’t be able to find a decent job with health care benefits and parents worry that they’ll have to use money that should be going into retirement savings to pay for their 26-year-old’s private insurance.