WASHINGTON — Hundreds of thousands of young adults are taking advantage of the 2010 health care law provision that allows people younger than 26 to remain on their parents’ health plans, some of the nation’s largest insurers are reporting. That pace appears to be faster than the government expected
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WellPoint, the nation’s largest publicly traded health insurer, with 34 million customers, said the provision on dependents was responsible for adding 280,000 members. That was about one-third of its total enrollment growth in the first three months of this year.
Other large insurers said they’d also added tens of thousands of young adults.
Aetna, for example, added fewer than 100,000; Kaiser Permanente, about 90,000; Highmark Inc., about 72,000; Health Care Service Corp., about 82,000; Blue Shield of California, about 22,000; and United Healthcare, about 13,000.
The Health and Human Services Department estimated that about 1.2 million young adults would sign up for coverage in 2011. The early numbers from insurers show that it could be much more, said Aaron Smith, the executive director of the Young Invincibles, a Washington-based nonprofit group that advocates for young adults.
Insurers described the growth in young-adult enrollment as the industry began reporting first-quarter earnings that showed better-than-expected profits.
Under the new health law, health plans and employers must offer coverage to enrollees’ adult children until age 26 even if the young adults no longer live with their parents, aren’t dependents on parents’ tax returns or no longer are students.
The dependent coverage provision went into effect last Sept. 23. However, health plans didn’t have to adopt the change until the start of the subsequent plan year, which for many companies was January. Dozens of insurers adopted the change earlier, soon after President Barack Obama signed the health overhaul law in March 2010.
While federal officials and consumer advocates are pleased that the demand for dependent coverage appears greater than projected, some employers are worried about the cost of the additional coverage.
Helen Darling, the CEO of the National Business Group on Health, which represents more than 300 large employers, said employers generally didn’t like the idea of anything that would add to their health costs. “I don’t think anyone is eager to spend more money,” Darling said. “This is not something employers would have done on their own.”
According to federal estimates, adding young adult coverage is likely to increase average family premiums by about 1 percent.
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