The Nevada Sagebrush

Click here to read the passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Click here to read the Congressional Research Office’s summary of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Click here to read the reconciliation resolution.

Click here to read the Congressional Research Office’s summary of the reconciliation resolution.

Kathy Gordon was diagnosed with leukemia when she was 12 years old. She relapsed again at age 18 and, after five years of treatment, is now cancer-free. Although her cancer is gone, treatments like radiation therapy and a bone marrow transplant require long-term care.

“It’s not really an option for me to not have health insurance,” the 24-year-old journalism major said.

General Clinic Manager Kira Brooks sorts through the morning’s patient files before the Student Outreach Clinic opens Saturday. The clinic serves local uninsured people and often has to turn people away due to the volume of patients and limited time the clinic is open. Photo by Brian Bolton /Nevada Sagebrush.

However, Gordon was forced off her parents’ insurance plan in August, when she turned 24. Now among the 20 percent of college students nationwide without health insurance, according to a 2008 Government Accountability Office study, Gordon searched for a new plan she could afford. Her search was unsuccessful. Unable to pay higher costs levied against her because of her medical history, she is without coverage.

That will change in six months, though, when her parents’ insurance company will be required to allow her back onto their plan until she is 26. The change is part of one of the largest — the plan is more than 2,500 pages — social reforms in decades.

After months of debate and a series of party-line votes, President Barack Obama signed into law the health care reform package, titled the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, last week. While debate on the legislation is far from over, details of how the reforms will be implemented are surfacing.

For college students around the country, the reform’s provisions will filter into reality over their years of school and after graduation.

With 30 percent of those age 20-29 — almost 13 million people — uninsured in the United States, according to 2008 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the provision allowing people under age 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance will carry  an impact, Daniel Cook, a professor of health ethics, policy and administration at the University of Nevada, Reno, said.

The clause will likely lower that number by a large percentage as many young people are  uninsured after being dropped from their parents’ plans, something that would change under the reform, Cook said.

“It’s generally a healthy time in people’s lives, so some people take the risk,” he said.

Under the provision, young adults would not have to prove full-time enrollment in a post-secondary school, as is the case with many health insurance plans that offer extended coverage.

Alvaro Maldonado, a 21-year-old psychology major, said the idea of staying on his parents’ insurance plan took a load off his mind.

“I don’t have any health issues, but when you get sick it can be a huge deal and really expensive,” he said.

The act also prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage or treatment for pre-existing conditions – such as asthma, mental illness or chronic diseases – beginning in 2014. The provision addresses an issue that affected Ann Newsome, a 20-year-old political science and women’s studies major. Newsome, who was diagnosed with type I diabetes while uninsured, said she had to go through multiple insurance companies before getting a job at Wells Fargo with insurance that admitted her.

“One woman said she’d never seen a person with type I diabetes approved (for coverage),” Newsome said.

Even if Newsome found an independent plan that would take her, her diabetes may have forced the co-pay price high enough to make it unattainable, like Gordon’s leukemia did for her.

“The costs were significant enough I just can’t afford it,” Gordon said.

Cook said Gordon and Newsome’s cases were common among people looking for private insurance on the open market.

“Companies were hiring people to do background checks on people to find ways to deny coverage to anyone that might cost too much to cover,” he said. “It’s a huge issue for a lot of people who don’t have insurance through a job.”

Along with the measures aimed at making insurance more accessible comes a section of the reform requiring people to take advantage of it. By 2014, people in the United States will be required to have health insurance or face federal fines. To achieve that, tax credits for people in the middle class will be phased in during the next few years to help them pay for insurance.

The future of the bill is far from certain: 15 states have already filed legislation challenging the reforms’ constitutionality and many Republican congressional candidates are running on platforms pledging its repeal.  UNR student Gillian Bos said pushing people to have health insurance was a step in the right direction.

“I’ve been in a situation where I’ve injured myself (without insurance) and I had to pay a lot and use student loans to pay for it,” the 25-year-old nutritional science major said. “I think (the reform) might be close to socialized health care, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”

Jay Balagna can be reached at jbalagna@nevadasagebrush.com.

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