Young Invincibles

Young Invincibles

“Young Invincibles”, is what the insurance industry calls the demographic of young adults between the ages 18-29.

Have you recently been booted off of your parent’s insurance?  Are you struggling to pay that extra health insurance bill you haven’t been accustomed to paying in the past?  Do you have health insurance coverage?  Are you looking for a company who will cover you without draining your bank account within the first two months of signing up?  One third of people between 20 and 24 are uninsured for these and other various reasons.  The end of the article, CDC: Young Invincibles Have Serious Health Concerns gives a few suggestions on what to do about health insurance.  It also mentions Tonik, a health insurance that uses”youthful language” and is aesthetically designed to to help young adults relate to and understand it better.

Death risks for young adults rise after their teenage years

Dr. S. Todd Callahan, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt University, sees teenage patients with chronic health conditions loose coverage from their family’s insurance when they reach a certain age.  Concerning young adults without insurance Callahan said, “Attention is focused on teenage years, but the young adult years are often neglected…  When a youth reaches their 20s, they’re in a vulnerable time. The social supports for adolescents fall by the wayside [and] become discontinuous.”
Callahan also discusses how there’s a perception that once an adolecent survives the teenage years, it’s “smooth sailing” from then on out.  However, statistics and hard research evidence proves otherwise.

• Deaths caused by suicide, homicide and accidents increase in the 20’s decade demographic.
• 45% of women between 20 and 24 in the USA are infected with HPV which can cause cervical cancer.
• About one-third of 21- to 25-year-olds and a quarter of 26- to 29-year-olds reported using an illicit drug in the past year.
• 1/4 of young adults in the USA are obese
• 2/3 of young adults in the USA report not having leisure time for physical activity

So if you don’t have health insurance, I think it’s a good idea to look into getting it!  It’s smart.  Just because we’re at the peak of our lives, living here in our 20’s, doesn’t mean that we’re invincible.  Even that mentality of being at the peak of our health can be dangerous if it leads us to neglecting our health and taking it for advantage.  You never know when something might happen whether it’s an illness (chronic, hereditary, viral, bacterial) that creeps up on you, an accident, an injury, or anything else.

What do you all think of health insurance?  Is it overrated?  Should the government enforce people having insurance as much as it’s proposing to do?

Main Resource:
Park, Madison. CDC: ‘Young Invincibles’ have significant health concerns. CNN. Febuary 18, 2009. http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/17/cdc.young.people/index.html