Drug Prevalence Exacerbated by Dependent Coverage?

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act allows young adults to remain covered under their parents’ private insurance plan until age twenty-six since September 2010. The unintentional drug poisoning death rate among age group 23-25 per 100,000 population increased from 6.06 in 2002 to 14.76 in 2013, and the number of emergency department (ED) visits among young adults aged 18 to 25 for the use of illicit drugs and the misuse or abuse of pharmaceuticals increased between 2005 and 2011. These are causes for concern from policy and public health perspectives due to the serious health risks and the potential national productivity risks. A consistency with the timing of implementation of dependent coverage and the subsequent increase in the unintentional drug poisoning death rate and the number of ED visits among young adults. I consider a possible explanation for the sudden jump in 2000s: the implementation of dependent coverage up to age 26. In this study, I explore the causal effect of dependent coverage and health-risk behavior among young adults with nationally representative sample. Unintentional drug poisoning injury death rate and ED visit rate for unintentional drug poisoning are used as a measurement of health-risk behavior. I analyze the variation in death rate across states and ED visit rate across age groups (age 23-25 verse age 17-19) to identify the causal effect of this provision.