If you're young, cash-strapped, and healthy, health insurance might seem expensive and pointless. It's not. An ankle-twisting fall on a hiking trail, a broken arm in a friendly soccer game, bronchitis that turns into pneumonia—you're potentially talking thousands of dollars in medical expenses. Who do you think will get the bill? See which of the following eight categories describes you, and check out experts' recommendations. Our health insurance glossary will help with unfamiliar terms.
You're moving from high school into the workforce.
If your parents are covered through an employer, try to stay on their plan, says Kathleen Stoll, director of health policy at Families USA, a healthcare consumer advocacy group. It'll cost less than getting individual health insurance on your own. If you're under 26 and unmarried, you can be insured as a dependent on your parents' insurance (unless you can get your own job-based coverage). Some states require insurers to extend parental coverage to adult children past age 26; in New Jersey, for example, eligibilty lasts until you're 30. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) estimates that about 1.2 million young adults will elect to stay on a parent's health plan in 2011.
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