Young adults comprise 17 percent of the under-65 population and they account for 30 percent of the uninsured non-elderly population. There are 13.7 million young adults who lack affordable health insurance in the UnitedStates, an almost 11% increase since 2000. Young adults between the ages of 19 and 29 represent the largest and fastest growing segment of the population without affordable health insurance, and are uninsured at twice the rate of adults ages 30 to 64.

Young adults who lack affordable health insurance report that they have gone without needed health care because of costs, including failing to fill a prescription, not seeing a doctor or specialist when needed, or skipping a recommended medical test or treatment. The instability of health insurance coverage puts them at risk for poor health.

There are both health and financial consequences when young adults who are just starting out in the workforce or entering college lose their health insurance. Young adults who are not in school full-time are more likely to go without coverage. It would be a wise thing if changes in policy could be made like increasing the age to be able to get into public programs or being able to stay under the parents insurance until the transition into adulthood was more stable. Young adults are most likely to lose affordable health coverage when they graduate from high school or college because if they are not going to school then the parents have to drop them off their insurance. Age 18 or 19 is a crucial turning point for coverage in many private and public health insurance plans. Employers who offer coverage do not insure dependent children over age 18 or 19 if they do not attend college. Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program treat age 19 as the cut-off for children's coverage, and these young adults will lose coverage unless they can qualify for Medicaid as adults.

We must address these gaps in affordable health coverage for young people if we want to ensure a stable and healthy workforce for the future.

A few ideas might be:

Having states ensure that colleges and universities require full- and part-time students to have afforadble health insurance, and that they offer coverage to both with incentives from the Federal and State level.

Hopefully, we do not leave our young people out to dry when they are just getting started in life.