Adding Children Under 26 Years To A Parents Health Insurance
The healthcare reform bill was signed into law on September 22, 2010. This law presents a new option for child health insurance coverage to families looking to renew their policy by making it possible to extend all medical coverage and benefits to adolescents and children of age 16 and below. Reform ensures that children can stay on their parents’ health insurance plan up until their 26th birthday, regardless of their marital or student status, and no matter what address they might call their home.
It doesn’t even matter if a child or young adult is still claimed as a dependent on his or her parents’ tax return, or if he or she has been emancipated. In fact, the only exemption to the 26-years-old rule is if the child or young adult is eligible to be covered by his or her employer’s health care insurance. As a side note, in states where the maximum age is higher than 26, the state law still applies.
It is important to clarify exactly to whom this applies – who is an eligible child? An insured adult can extend coverage to his or her natural child, stepchild, adopted child or to a dependent child during the adoption waiting period. Unfortunately, this privilege does not apply to grandchildren; not even those grandkids being raised primarily by their insured grandparents.
Further details regarding the law as it applies to those 26 or under include:
- Anyone who has an insurance policy which they’d like to extend to a child under the age of 26 may do so under a one-off special enrollment, even if the child or young adult has applied before and was declined.
- Anyone covered by an individual, spouse or employee health insurance policy may add his or her child as long as the enrollment status is changed to indicate that dependents may be added to the contract, such as in a family health insurance policy.
- New applicants for a health insurance program who meet all eligibility requirements and enroll during the special enrollment period can take advantage of the new rules for dependents under the age of 26.
- If a parent already has a health insurance plan that covers his or her children, the healthcare reform law changes nothing; everything stays just as it is.
- If a policyholder who has a child below the age of 26 on his or her health insurance policy needs to have the child removed from the plan, it is certainly still possible and only requires a request to the health insurance company to have the individual removed.
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