Main Street

A Graduation Present

Good news for college seniors and their parents:

This year’s crop of college graduates may have trouble finding a job, given the state of the economy. But some of them will have a much easier time keeping health insurance while they look.

Insurance giant United HealthCare said it would implement, as of today, a requirement of the new health care law that allows young adults who are no longer full-time students to remain on their parent’s health plans until they reach the age of 26. WellPoint, too, announced it would do the same thing, effective June 1.

Since this provision of the new health care law doesn’t go into effect until September, this is significant:

United figures the change in policy could help at least 150,000 graduating seniors and their families from having to find temporary coverage between this spring and the time the new requirement becomes effective.

(This is an effective and meaningful move by United and Wellpoint. But insurance companies, by definition, still care more about profit than about your wellbeing.)

Tags: Health Care, health care reform