Dependent Coverage Eligibility and the Health Insurance Status of Young Adults

摘要

The 2010 federal health reform -- the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- required that with the first plan renewal on or after September 2010, all private health insurance plans treat children up to the age of 26 as dependents, eligible to be covered under a parent's family plan. A number of states had already enacted similar legislation that applied to some health insurance plans, but such laws did not cover the large employer plans operated under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) -- those plans cover a substantial fraction of the privately insured people in the United States.