Sometimes we can't help it. You have to go to college to get a job to get insurance, but what if you don't have parents that can provide insurance while you are in college?

Sure you can get a fulltime job in college, but what sort of insurance will you get from a typical college-age entry-level job that won't push you farther over the edge?

I had a job that provided medical, dental, and vision benefits for me and my family at 19.

However, that same job (grocery) today is radically different. Especially in the front end, where I worked.

NGB still works grocery, but she has been in a department - just recently promoted to produce manager. So, full family coverage for $18/week employee contribution.

Whereas my job (long-term care and rehabilitation) it would cost $1500/month for medical-only family coverage.


All being said - the cost of coverage isn't the seat of the issue, it's the cost of care.

But, the philosophy here is increasing coverage will help to drive down the cost of care, because inability to pay, or unpaid care costs are a large driver of increasing care costs. This largely reflects hospital costs, though. Clinics and private practices can turn away patients while hospitals generally can not.

Also, having a larger pool of payers into coverage should theoretically drive down coverage costs. Either that, or create record profits for providers....

I'm banking on record profits...

For my son, who is 22 and an hourly employee at a retail store, his hours were drastically reduced so that the employer didn't have to offer him health insurance. He can hardly pay his bills and I don't see him moving out of my parent's basement any time soon.

The good thing is, if you are able, he can now be covered on your insurance until he is 26. We have all of our adult kids on our insurance and it doesn't cost us anything extra. There are three tiers to our insurance: individual, couple, or family. Since we have a 5-year-old, we have to get the "family" coverage, but the premium doesn't increase no matter how many people are in the family. So we pay the same to cover seven people as we would to cover three.

Yes, he is covered by my insurance and his employer knows that, but they still cut hos hours. He has been looking for full time work all summer.

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