Retirees may find it difficult to insure their young adult children. Assuming you are a retiree with a 23-year old son who is about to graduate and you have just learned that the insurance company cannot qualify your son for the privileges according to the new health law. You are getting more confused with their explanations and want some clarifications. So here you go.

Under the new health law, adult children are allowed to stay on their parents’ plans until the age of 26. Facts from the Department of Health and Human Services state that depending on the retiree’s health plan, your adult child may or may not be covered with the benefits. If your health plan is retiree only plan, which is most of the time the situation, whether the Medicare coverage is primary or secondary doesn’t matter any more.

It is unfortunate to say that older parents cannot count on their Medicare for their children’s health coverage. The coverage is only made available to people who qualify for the said plan. There is no way you can have your dependent covered, as well. The only people qualified for this program are those who are 65 years old above of those who have been differently-abled due to ageing or accident.

With this being said, more and more people have been turning to their secondary insurances or retiree insurance. The sad part is that only one in every four employers that have more than 500 employees offering early retiree coverage. 19 per cent of these employers offer a plan for retirees in 2010 who are Medicare-eligible. This was based on the survey done by Mercer Human Resource consultants. The figures are definitely the lowest so far.

Actually, employers aren’t required to have the dependents covered in such health plans for either active or retired members. Luckily, many employers still do so. A big 96 per cent of large employers do actually give coverage to retirees’ spouses. 84 per cent of these large employees provided coverage to other dependents such as adult children. This was the results of a survey on 302 employers with more than 1,000 people employed on their company. The survey was administered by Aon Hewitt and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

There are some events, however, that can make a dependent legible for benefits and coverages. Your dependent will be qualified to the coverage if your adult child loses his status as a dependent. This is based under the health plan rules.

In the event a dependent’s parents settle for divorce, Medicare can qualify the young adult child dependent. This is all made possible, thanks to COBRA, a federal law responsible for giving dependents some coverage in case above mentioned events happen. If a parent dies, the dependent also becomes legible. However, COBRA requires the plan member to be responsible, meaning, he has to pay for the entire premium.

Enrolling in an individual policy is another alternative that is less expensive than the previous. Consider buying your adult son or daughter an individual policy considering he or she is in proper health conditions.