Lawmakers unsure how many bill will insure

A new state bill could allow 400,000 more Pennsylvanians to use their parents’ health… A new state bill could allow 400,000 more Pennsylvanians to use their parents’ health insurance, but state officials disagree on the bill’s terms.

Senate Bill 189, sponsored by Sen. Jake Corman, R-Centre, allows young adults to remain on their parents’ group health insurance plans until they turn 30. The bill will become law with Gov. Ed Rendell’s signature.

Melissa Fox, spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Insurance Department, said the employer ultimately decides whether to cover their employees’ older children.

“Let’s start in very simple facts,” she said. “Employers are not required by law to offer health insurance to their employees in the first place.”

She said employers can choose whether to insure their employees and their family members. The state mandates what benefits employers must include in packages they offer to their employees, but employers can choose to offer additional benefits.

“Employers are not required to have the adult-child benefit in their employee benefits package,” Fox said. “It can be included if the employer, i.e. the policy holder, chooses to include it in the package.”

Alan Meisel, director of Pitt’s Center for Bioethics and Health Law, said in an e-mail that the legislation seemed to indicate that the employer “has no say” in whether a parent chooses to keep his child on the plan.

The UPMC legal department is researching the issue to find out which benefits are mandated and which are discretionary if the bill is signed into law, Nancy Gilkes, benefits relationship manager at Pitt’s Human Resources department, said.

She said her department is working with UPMC to figure out how this law could affect Pitt’s health coverage programs.

The current law allows for children to be covered under their parents’ health plans until they turn 19, unless they are in college.

The new law offers the extension to those younger than 30 if they are not married, have no dependents and are Pennsylvania residents or full-time college students at a Pennsylvania institution.

The legislation could help graduate students older than 25 who might not receive benefits from their universities and other young adults who work at jobs that do not offer comprehensive health care plans. Last fall, 10,135 graduate students were enrolled at Pitt, including about 3,000 part-time students.

Lynette Spataro, academic administrator of Pitt’s graduate bioengineering department, said she guessed most of the students in her program would remain on their parents’ insurance. She said most of the 150 students in the program are younger than 30.

The bill makes it mandatory for fully insured companies to allow the child to return to the family plan. But according to the legislation, the insurance policy holder, described as an “adult head of a family,” ultimately chooses to insure the child.

Parents might face higher premiums from their health insurance companies if they choose to keep their children on their plans. Fox said parents could see their costs increase by hundreds of dollars per month.

“The extended coverage is not free,” she said.

She also said the law will apply to new contracts and renewals 180 days after the bill is signed.

“So if the bill is signed before the end of June, [and] a policy is issued or renewed in January 2010, the provision will kick in with that January 2010 issuance or renewal,” Fox said.

The bill shouldn’t affect Pitt’s Student Health program because it uses a portion of the student health fee to pay for services, Student Health medical director Elizabeth Wettick said. Student Health does not participate in third-party billing, she said in an e-mail.

“We hope that this will mean that more students, both graduate and undergraduate, will be covered by health insurance to ensure there are no barriers for any student to receive medical care,” Wettick said.

Corman said he supported the bill because the largest population of uninsured Pennsylvanians is young people between the ages of 18 and 35.

“This was a way to extend [coverage] even longer, so that all the young people who are transitioning into the work force and are unable to get health insurance in their own right can still buy it through their parents’ health insurance plan,” Corman said.

Ellen Laden, spokeswoman for the insurance company United Healthcare, said young adults are the “largest and fastest-growing” group of uninsured Americans, and that almost one-third of college graduates are uninsured for a time during their first year after graduation.

“Moreover, 37 percent of uninsured young adults are carrying medical debt and paying it off over time,” Laden said.

More than 20 states have laws extending eligibility for young adults on their parents’ health insurance plans, she said.

Though the new coverage would allow students without a full-time job to obtain the necessary health insurance, some, like Pitt student Michelle Vo, said they feel that a raised premium would make coverage more complicated.

“Charging a premium for college grads to stay on their parents’ health insurance would disadvantage many who are already straining themselves to pay grad school tuition or pay off undergrad loans,” she said.

Vo said her mother would most likely pay the premium because of the importance of having health insurance.