The Connector Authority is heralding the “Young Adults Plans” (health insurance plans available through the Connector for 19-26 year-olds) as an affordable insurance option for young people. Advocates are questioning the adequacy of these plans. Who’s right?
The plans are cheap – in price and value. Young Adult Plans (YAPs) have extremely slimmed down benefit packages. Most alarming – they may contain annual benefit caps. Emergency regulations released by the Division of Insurance on April 17 allow YAPs to limit coverage to $50,000 per year, leaving insured young adults with zero coverage for catastrophic health care needs.
Seem to us this defeats the purpose of insurance. At its essence,
insurance exists to protect people from financial risk and barriers to care in the face of serious illness or injury. It’s appealing – and
wrong – to think young people don’t get sick or injured. Young adults are not immune to accidents or chronic disease, such as hemophilia, HIV, cancer, mental illness and diabetes. Treatments can cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars annually.
Failing to provide coverage for catastrophic health care needs can leave individuals exposed to tremendous costs. Young adults who exceed an annual benefit cap will face life-altering consequences: the loss of coverage will leave them exposed to huge medical bills, leading to medical debt and personal bankruptcy and barriers to care. Insurance will have failed them, leaving a financial crisis on top of a health care crisis.
The Division of Insurance must fulfill its role to protect consumers
from unfair and inadequate coverage. The Division and the Commonwealth should not support cost-sharing mechanisms that undermine young adults’ health and financial stability. The Division should not design cheap insurance plans that stop working when people get sick.
John McDonough
Executive Director, Health Care for All
Excuse me, this YAP sort of thing is just what the “Mandate to purchase a commercial product” health insurance reform law is explicitly designed to be about. The writing was on the wall when you allow healthcare to be treated as a commercial product instead of as a public good as it ought to be treated in the policy arena.
So it’s kinda’ strange that groups such as yours that should have known this from the get-go, are acting all surprised and disturbed. Our group has been sounding an alarm about this non-reform reform sham law since before it passed (and we don’t have the dozens of staff and the $2Mil annual budget that “Health Care For All” does).
It’s time to stop playing games with people’s health, with family budgets, and with peoples’ lives.
Learn more and join the work for healhtcare for people, not for profits
at
http://www.DefendHealth.org
Thank you.
Speaking of YAP
Kingsdale counsels tax cheat: During the WBUR show “Your Call” with Bob Oakes John Kingsdale is heard counseling an admitted tax evader on his options for getting cheap health insurance. Slide the player’s time to 43:40 and prepare to get sick if you’re an honest taxpayer. Ironically, if the tax cheat simply under reported his income YOU fund his free insurance. http://www.wbur.org/news/2007/66925_20070504.asp
Also, McDonough there’s something ironic about the guy who giddily cheered “guilty,guilty,guilty” when this law was passed to now pontificate on its flaws. No law is was better than this P.O.S.
[...] under QSHIP were well documented last spring in a report by the Access Project. John McDonough wrote on this blog in June about the problems with the limited benefits in the Young Adult Plans. Since, the [...]
Disappearing insurance, always the same.