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Several health care reform provisions have begun
When Tamisha Jackson turned 22 and graduated from college last year, she was pushed off her parents' health insurance plan.
Since then, she's become a graduate student in women's studies at Towson University but hasn't been able to foot the $1,400 annual bill for coverage from the school. To compensate, she's been popping vitamins and watching her step.
"I just didn't want to have to pay such a large sum," said Jackson, who lives with her parents in Prince George's County and works as a graduate assistant in the school's Center for Student Diversity. "I've been fortunate not to have serious issues."
Jackson is a member of the largest group of uninsured Americans: young adults. Close to a third of those between 18 and 24 years old lack coverage. But when a provision of national health care reform kicks in Thursday, she and thousands of others like her in Maryland–and millions nationwide–will have the option to return to their parents' insurance plans.
Other provisions will also become effective Thursday that, among other things, ban lifetime benefit caps, require no-cost preventive medical services such as mammograms, and begin to close the so-called "doughnut hole" for seniors on federal prescription drug plans. The more costly and complex insurance exchanges, which will allow the uninsured to shop for coverage and subsidies, won't go into effect until 2014.