Extending Dependent Coverage

Extending dependent coverage until dependents reach the age of twenty-six may make sense to some individuals and families. The majority of individuals and parents are not happy with this prospective of the new health care reform bill because there are no exceptions. When you first read about the insertion into the new health care reform bill, it sounds very enticing.
However, upon closer examination, there is no room for exclusions and this is where it does not make sense. When your eighteen-year-old daughter decides to marry her long time boyfriend who is twenty years old who carries the responsibility for health insurance coverage? Does you daughter still remain on your health insurance policy until she turns twenty-six? Does her long time boyfriend, new husband, remain on his parent’s health insurance policy?
What happens when your daughter and her husband add a child to their new family one-year later? Who then purchases a health insurance policy to cover the health care requirements for the newborn? Does the new mother and new father now have to purchase an individual health insurance policy because the newborn has no health insurance coverage of any kind, by anyone?
The new health care reform bill does have a minimal amount of requirements in order for the children to remain on the health insurance policy of the parents. A few of the new health care requirements are the following.
1. Young adults must be under the age of twenty-six
2. Children over the age of nineteen and under twenty-six do not have to be listed on the parents Form 1040 as a dependent
3. To attain continued health insurance coverage, young adults under the age of twenty-six are not required to live in the home of the parents. Young adults under the age of twenty-six are disqualified to remain on a parents health insurance policy when the new employer offers health insurance coverage until 2014
4. In January 2014 the health care reform bill requirements change again because all citizens are required to carry health insurance or face a fine
One portion of the new health care reform bill does not address what the cost will be to the parents to keep the young adult on their health insurance policy. As long as a young adult remains on the parents health insurance policy they will also receive health care services for any pre-existing health conditions they developed. There is no waiting period until the young adult reaches the age of twenty-seven and must purchase a health insurance policy for him or her self.