It can be a challenge to make sense of healthcare reform, especially since most of it won’t take effect for another couple years, but there is one tenet of the Affordable Care Act that’s in play now and pretty easy to grasp: young adults can now stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26.
This has been a game-changer for Cleveland resident, Steven Giallourakis, who was in high school when doctors delivered the bad news:
GIALLOURAKIS: And they found that I had a softball-sized tumor in my lower back. And that was kind of the day that everything officially started.
Giallourakis survived his stage 4 osteosarcoma but then in 2008, he was diagnosed with leukemia, a cancer caused by the treatment of his original disease.
Since passage of the Affordable Care Act two years ago, he’s been able to stay on his parent’s health insurance.
GIALLOURAKIS: I can go to the hospital and not have to worry about paying some massive bill that I’m not going to be able to afford.
This is the kind of message the Obama administration wants to relay to the public, about the immediate and deeply personal benefits of the new law.
GIALLOURAKIS: The healthcare law is about people like me—it’s StevenCare.
Polls indicate that many Americans still aren’t sold on “Obamacare,” as Republicans derisively refer to it. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently found 67% don’t think the new law will help them or may leave them worse off. Just 25% believe it will help their lives. Polls also indicate most Americans don’t favor throwing the law overboard. So, it appears neither side has made a sale…yet.