April 22nd, 2010

For the Philadelphia area, the Bucks County Courier Times reports:

Several major for-profit U.S. health insurers have announced they’ll let most adult children continue health coverage under parents’ insurance policies earlier than required under recently adopted federal health care reforms.

UnitedHealthcare, WellPoint Inc. and Humana are among the first U.S. insurers to announce plans to extend coverage to unmarried adult children before the Sept. 23 effective date.

But it’s unclear if the Philadelphia region’s largest insurers will follow.

Independence Blue Cross is assessing all aspects of the health reform bill including dependents to age 26 and at this time has not finalized implementation plans, spokeswoman Ruth Stoolman said.

“The regulations regarding this new aspect of the law have not been written and we’re waiting to see what that will include,” Stoolman added.

But employers with Blue Cross coverage now can opt to add dependents to age 30, Stoolman said.

The coverage can be added to age 19, 23, 25 and 30, but it’s up to an employer to decide to offer it, Stoolman said. Not many employers opted to extend coverage to age 30, she added.

Aetna, the region’s second largest insurer, has “nothing to announce at this time,” spokesman Walt Cherniak said.

Pennsylvania Insurance Department spokeswoman Roseanne Placey said other carriers have not notified the department of intentions to implement the coverage extension early. She added as more reform mandates go into effect, the agency will be doing market surveillance activities.

Read more.

And for the Northeastern PA area, the Times-Tribune reports:

Two major health insurance companies announced Wednesday they would fast-track a federal program to allow young adults to remain on their parents’ policies until age 26.

Blue Cross of Northeastern Pennsylvania will allow young adults up to age 26 to remain covered on a parent’s existing policy starting June 1. Aetna announced a similar decision Wednesday.

The companies followed in the footsteps of United Health Care, Humana, Kaiser Permanente and WellPoint Inc. in expanding the age at which children can be covered under health care reform passed by Congress in March.

The new law will allow young adults to stay on or return to a parent’s insurance plan until age 26. Most public and private health plans do not cover dependents after age 19, though many private plans will cover full-time college students on their parents plans until age 23.

The federal law under health care reform does not take effect until Sept. 23, which would create a coverage gap for people graduating from college this spring or summer.

“We were getting a lot of questions from members about bridging the coverage gap,” Blue Cross spokesman Anthony Matrisciano said. “We wanted to ensure that these young adults could keep their coverage.”

Traditionally, adults 19 to 29 are the most likely to be uninsured, according to Mark Pauly, Ph.D., a health care economist at the University of Pennsylvania. About 15 percent of people ages 19-44 are uninsured across the state, according to a survey done in 2008 by the state Insurance Department. No data was available on the 19-26 age group.