26-year-olds aging out of the parent’s health insurance policy are stuck on the struggle bus, reports CNN.
Adulting, it would seem, is hard.
CNN’s report would be hilarious and reads more like a parody report, except for the fact that it’s unfortunately true.
Marguerite Moniot felt frustrated and flummoxed. Despite the many hours she had spent in front of the computer this year reading consumer reviews of health insurance plans offered on the individual market in Virginia, she still did not know what plan was right for her.
Welcome to the real world, sweetheart.
But illness does not recognize age. Dominique Ridley, who turned 26 on Dec. 6, knows this all too well.Ridley has asthma. She always carries an inhaler and sees a doctor when she feels her chest tighten. The student at Radford University in Virginia relies on her mother’s employer-sponsored plan for coverage.Ridley started peppering her parents with questions about health insurance as soon as she started seeing ads for this year’s open enrollment.”I don’t want to just go out there and apply for health insurance, and it be all kinds of wrong and I can’t afford it,” she said.Her parents didn’t have the answers, but her mother linked up Ridley with a friend that runs a marketing company tailored to promoting the Affordable Care Act. Ridley then connected with a broker who signed her up for a silver plan that will cost her less than $4 per month, after receiving a premium subsidy of more than $500 a month.”If you don’t have health insurance, you don’t have anything,” Ridley said.
In between the personal anecdotes, CNN blames Trump for market instability and for putting 26-year-olds in the perilous place of a functioning adult. Hilariously, the report ends with the story of James Rowley, who, unlike the others featured, has it together. Rowley managed to navigate the bureaucratic waters, do a bit of homework, and sign up for health insurance all on his very own:
James Rowley, a 26-year-old entrepreneur from Fairfax, Virginia, is among those who signed up without help. He started his own company two years ago while covered under his father’s health plan. When he turned 26, he signed up for health insurance on his own through a special enrollment period this year. After general enrollment opened this fall, he once again picked a plan.”I might not 100% need it now, but there will come a time where health insurance is important,” said Rowley.
Forget stories of long, barefooted voyages through the snow just to get to school, later generations will reminisce of a time when, late in the twenties, they had to research health insurance plans all on their own.
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