Apparently, last year Minnesota passed a law making it mandatory for parents’ health insurance to cover their (unmarried) kids up until age 25. Thus, as far as I can tell, I’m not uninsured! Hooray!
If you’re not from MN and don’t have a job with benefits yet (?), it’s worth checking to see if your state has a similar law. I saw that Utah has you covered until age 26…there’s probably others.
I’m in Texas. I don’t think I have to check.
I wonder if there are any Health Econometrics papers about the cost of healthcare in Minnasota and Utah vs the cost of healthcare elsewhere. Theoretically, such laws mandating healthcare coverage should increase costs substancially. It would be interesting to see 1) if they do and 2) how much. If it was known how many parents bought policies for their children before and after the legislation, one could calculate the amount of dead weight loss created by the policy.
I also wonder if the law increases the number of young people who choose to be enterpreneurs/self-employed. If you’ve got a pre-existing condition, there’s no way you’ll ever go off the corporate dime and start your own business in this country unless you’re so fantastically rich to begin with you can pay your medical bills out of pocket…