Any company I’ve worked for required an increased premium for “family plans”, so there is an increased payment to the insurance company (regardless of how many children/young adults are included). The idea is to gamble that the increased premium won’t be consumed by the medical needs of the young people - and is better than getting nothing from them at all.
You can’t ignore the difficulties workers (especially young ones) have getting insurance; companies would rather they worked 29 hours per week and did without it. If nothing is done to address that, expect Obama II in the White House in four years.
Insurance isn’t a gamble. It is a science that uses the Law of Large Numbers which is a statistical axiom that states that the larger the number of exposure units independently exposed to loss, the greater the probability that actual loss experience will equal the expected loss experience.
It is not an employers responsibility to provide health insurance. Health insurance is a benefit that corporations offer to entice high quality employees to work for them. The individual is responsible for their own health insurance if they can not get it from an employer.
Family coverage is for either one or fifty children. There is no increase per child. So if an employee has a 26, 22, 15 and 9 year old adding the 22 and 26 year old does not increase the premium on a group policy. Adding children, one or more adds to the policy premium. There is no additional payment if there is 1, 2 or 10 children added to the policy. It does however expose the insurance company to more risk.
Insurance for young adults is cheap. At least it used to be before they passed the ACA.
A major medical policy used to cost less than $100 a month. A 24, 25, or 26 year old so unproductive and irresponsible that they can not earn an extra couple hundred dollars a month to pay for a catastrophic medical policy has more problems than not having insurance. You don’t need doctor visits, Chiropractic services and drug abuse programs. You need coverage in case you get hit by a bus or get cancer, not the common cold.
It is about personal responsibilities.
Major Medical Insurance policies where always very affordable for young people and even preexisting conditions where covered after a several months, normally 6 - 12 month, waiting period.
There is no reason why an employer should be responsible to pay any portion of an insurance premium of an employees 26 year old ‘child’. There is no reason an insurance company should be expected to pay benefits on an insureds 26 year old adult child. It’s ridiculous to even consider a person of 26 a child.
If someone tried to treat me like a child when I was 26, I would have been offended. I had already graduated college and had a serious career by that time.
Hell by the time my father was 26 he had fought in a war, gotten married, graduated college, established a career and had three out of his six children.
One of the biggest problems in society today is the infantilization of people. 26 year old people are not children, nor are 22 year old people. They are adults and we should treat them as such including giving them the responsibility to secure a catastrophic insurance policy.
It isn’t like they are being asked to storm the beaches at Normandy for heavens sake.