New Arizona PIRG Education Fund Guide Explains Health Care Coverage Options for Young People and their Families

Arizona PIRG Education Fund

A provision of the new federal health care law that goes into effect today allowing parents to keep children on their health insurance plan until age 26 will benefit 30,900 young people, according to the Arizona PIRG Education Fund.

The Arizona PIRG Education Fund marked the day by releasing The Young Person’s Guide to Health Insurance, a consumer guide which offers information about the rights and options available to young people and their families under the new law, which includes a letter addressed to students coming back to college this fall from President Barack Obama. 

“The provisions that go into effect today are the first of many that will help families breathe a little easier when it comes to their health care,” stated Rhiannon Dysart, an ASU student involved with the Arizona PIRG Education Fund.

Dysart continued, “The Arizona PIRG Education Fund wants students to know they now have options when it comes to getting healthcare coverage — they can call Mom and Dad because their family plan will now be one of the easiest and most affordable ways to get covered; they can find a job with good benefits – that’s still the way that the majority of Americans get their health care benefits; or they can also now use healthcare.gov, a new federal website that allows them to access and evaluate insurance plans that are available on the private market.”

To succeed, the Arizona PIRG Education Fund encouraged young people and all consumers to arm themselves with knowledge of their new rights including: 

• In the past, insurance companies could use inadvertent errors in enrollment forms to rescind coverage. Today, consumers have the right to keep your coverage without your insurance company yanking it because of a paperwork error.

• In the past, insurance company charged big co-pays and deductible that kept needed preventive care unaffordable and underused. As a result, people were more likely to get sicker until they sought more expensive care at the hospital or ER-driving up costs for all of us.  Today, in any new insurance policy, consumers have the right to get the preventive care you need to healthy and avoid expensive hospital and ER vists- without big co-pays and deductibles.

• In the past, insurance companies were free to deny coverage to children because of a pre-existing condition.  Today, every parent has the right to purchase coverage that covers their children with no pre-existing condition exclusions.  And in 2014, pre-existing conditions for all adults will be banned.