Reduced ACA Subsidies May Make It Harder for Young Adults To Afford Coverage
As they enter adulthood, many young Americans face a unique and intimidating challenge: finding their own health insurance when they are 26 years old. The lucky ones are covered by their work. But in the era of concerts, others fall from the “insurance cliff” and hard landing.
For a project produced in partnership with the New York Times, my colleague Hannah Norman and I gathered statistics (where they existed) and asked young people to tell us their stories. And, my boy, they did. The article clearly affected a nerve, collecting more than 1,600 comments the day after its publication.
Many young adults we interviewed for the article, such as Elizabeth Mathis and Evan Pack, a couple in Salt Lake City, could not afford their assurance that because of bonuses Biden bonuses for the plans purchased through the affordable care law, which has created federal and state markets where people can buy health insurance. These subsidies expire at the end of this year and, so far, Congress has shown little interest to extend them. If they expire, studies estimate, bonuses should increase by 75% on average next year and approximately 4 million people would lose coverage.
The cliff was an involuntary by-product of part of the affordable care law which allowed young adults to stay on their family plan until the 26th. This number has been chosen in a somewhat arbitrary way, as a time when people should be able to afford standardized plans created by the ACA or to make Medicaid.
In many ways, the law was an immediate victory for young adults, or at least an improvement in relation to the previous state of affairs: children were generally launched from the family plan earlier, at 18 or 21 years old, for example, and thrown into a free market where insurance products could exclude basic health needs, such as Asthma.
Millions of young adults have gained insurance that would otherwise have gone. But in the intermediate years, the Republicans have undermined many provisions of the ACA which have helped to form this safety net and, today, 26 is the age at which most Americans are not assured.
“The good news is that the ACA has given more options to young people,” said Karen Pollitz, who directed consumer information and insurance surveillance to the Ministry of Health and Social Services during the Obama administration. (Pollitz is also a former ACA expert for KFF, a health information non -profit organization that includes KFF Health News.) “The bad news is that good things are hidden in a very bad option mines that will leave you false if you fall sick.”
