For Carrie Kreis, health insurance for her 22-year-old-son is no longer a worry.
Thanks to the health care overhaul, her son Joseph can now be insured on his parents policy until the age of 26.
“Without this law, his options would have been limited,” said Carrie Kreis, of Syracuse. “He would have had to pay hundreds just to see a doctor and thousands if he, heaven forbid, needed to be hospitalized.”
Her son Joseph is among the estimated 1.2 million young adults who will be insured under their parents’ plan in 2011 alone. The law went into effect on Sept. 26, 2010. Before the law was enacted, many insurance companies dropped young adults from their parents’ plan at the age of 18 or at the completion of college.
For Carrie Kreis, changing that plight for young adults was a personal mission. She joined forces with the American Cancer Society, one of the largest supporters of the Health Care Reform Law, to lobby political leaders for support of the health care overhaul.
Her number one target was Rep. Dan Maffei, D-DeWitt. As an American Cancer Society volunteer, Kreis created her own group , who met with Maffei three times in Washington.
“I encouraged him to put himself in my shoes,” said Kreis. “How would he feel is his 22-year-old had to pay hundreds out of pocket each time he had to see the doctor?”
She praised Maffei for voting for the bill. But the health care overhaul was controversial and Maffei’s vote was attacked by opponents in the November election. He lost to Republican challenger Anne Marie Buerkle.
The American Cancer Society is one of the largest supporters of the law. “Most young people don’t need coverage for catastrophic illnesses like cancer, but some people do,” said Peter Slocum, vice president of advocacy for the American Cancer Society in Rochester. “There are too many post-college students who run into severe financial debt because they cannot pay for medical care.”
Consider these statistics on young adults and health insurance, from the White House’s website:
• Adults age 26 and younger account for 30 percent of the nation’s 46.8 million uninsured.
• That makes young adults the largest group among the uninsured.
• Nearly half of uninsured young adults report problems paying medical bills.
For many young adults, the recession has put them in a double-crunch. Jobs are scarce and an increasing number don’t offer health insurance as an employer-paid benefit. That was the bind for Joseph Kreis, his mother recalled. After he graduated from Syracuse University in 2009, he couldn’t find a full-time job. As a last resort, he took a part-time job at the YMCA in Syracuse, where health benefits were not offered.
His mom, Carrie Kreis, recalls that he couldn’t afford the $300- to $500-monthly premiums to buy his own insurance on a part-time salary. As she sees it, the new law that lets Joseph stay on her insurance for four more years is an investment.
“Keeping young adults insured encourages them to continue seeking medical attention and preventative care,” said Kreis. “This is the first step to a healthier America.”
(Hilary Levin is a senior majoring in broadcast journalism.)
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