Released: September 17, 2006

For insurance, adult children ride piggyback

Source: By Jennifer 8. Lee, New York Times (Free Registration)

Not only are children moving back home after college and asking Mom and Dad for monthly subsidies, but in a growing number of states children can now stay on their parents’ health insurance plans well into their 20’s.

Call it another example of adultescence. With 18- to 34-year-olds the fastest growing group of uninsured, states are extending the time that children can be a dependent for insurance purposes.

In New Jersey, which this year enacted the highest age limit, children can “piggyback” until they turn 30, as long as they live in the state and don’t have their own children.

The trend stems from a concern that a healthy — and profitable — segment of the population is dropping out of the insurance pool. About half of all states have studied such proposals, and at least nine have passed laws, eight of them since 2003 and three just this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Hilary Shinn, 23, of Wall Township, N.J., who likes competitive surfing and snowboarding, was graduating from Rutgers University last spring and had not decided whether she would have health insurance.

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