Evaluating the young adult dependent coverage provision of the Affordable Care Act
The Affordable Care Act of 2010 expanded health insurance coverage to young adults by requiring plans to extend coverage of adult child dependents until age 26, regardless of student status, marital status, or tax filing status. This session presents three papers that investigate the effect of this insurance expansion on health care access, health behavior, medical care use, and financial security of young adults. The first presentation explores the effect of the mandate on access to health care, utilization of preventive care, health behaviors and self-assessed health. The second presentation investigates the impact of the expansion on various aspects of inpatient care such as number of inpatient visits, visits related to mental illness, and source of hospital inpatient admission. The third presentation uses detailed data on health care expenditure to investigate whether the new insurance coverage for young adults provided financial protection and improved the emotional wellbeing of young adults. These three papers provide crucial empirical evidence to policymakers, as they continue to fine-tune the details of the ACA; to health insurers, who are interested in how changes in their coverage population would affect premiums and cost; and to medical care providers, who need to consider how the expansion will affect their capacity and resources, as well as to the growing academic literature on the effects of health insurance coverage expansions.