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- Title
Health Insurance and Young Adult Financial Distress.
- Authors
Blascak, Nathan; Mikhed, Vyacheslav
- Abstract
We study how health insurance eligibility affects financial distress for young adults using the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) dependent coverage mandate─the part of the ACA that requires private health insurance plans to cover individuals up to their 26th birthday. We examine the effects of both gaining and losing eligibility by exploiting the mandate's implementation in 2010 and its automatic disenrollment mechanism at age 26. Our estimates show that increasing access to health insurance lowers young adults' out‐of‐pocket medical expenditures and debt in third‐party collections. However, reductions in financial distress are transitory, as they diminish after an individual loses access to parental insurance when they age out of the mandate at age 26.
- Subjects
HEALTH insurance; YOUNG adults; HEALTH insurance eligibility; HEALTH insurance exchanges; HEALTH care industry billing; PATIENT Protection &; Affordable Care Act; MEDICAL debt
- Publication
Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, 2023, Vol 42, Issue 2, p393
- ISSN
0276-8739
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/pam.22458