This March, Richard Grenell, a former spokesman for the United Nations (UN), lamented that new health care reform legislation in the United States would further enable a generation of slackers.
Health care reform, which passed into law on March 23, 2010, will allow young people to stay on their parents’ health insurance policies until age 26, beginning six months after enactment. Prior to the reform bill, depending on their state of residence, most young adults were required to seek their own health insurance coverage once they turned 19 or were no longer full-time students.
“Generation Y and millenials will be enticed to continue slacking, without a job, well past college graduation,” Grenell wrote in a column for the Huffington Post.
“I think it’s nonsense,” said Robert Moore, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology at Saint Joseph’s U., in reference to Grenell’s prediction. Grenell’s claims that Generation Y is the most entitled generation in history “are painting with a very broad brush,” Moore said.
“There are derogatory stereotypes that this generation is the boomerang generation: that they leave but then always come back home,” Moore says. “But the job menu looks very different now from when I graduated college in 1977.”
Moore added that those who are critical probably come from a different era—in which it was easier to find a job after graduation.
Rather than looking at the stipulation in the health care bill as a negative, Moore said students’ job searches could be affected positively by the bill, serving as a cushion for young people to be able to build up a record and expertise in their field without having to worry about insurance.
“If there is a great concern over insurance, you might not take a job in your field because it lacks benefits, but take a job which isn’t but has them,” he said.
Laura Hurst, MSN, director of the Student Health Center at Saint Joseph’s University, pointed out the advantages of being able to stick with mom and dad’s insurance.
“Usually parents’ plans include group coverage because they’re covered by work,” Hurst says. “They can be much cheaper. The idea is that some people will use more, some not at all.”
Hurst said that although college and graduate school-age people are a generally healthy population, they have been the group most at risk for not being covered by insurance and neglecting treatment. Hurst said she thinks the bill could help establish habits of preventative treatment.
For Mary Alysse Metzger, a psychology major, landing a job with benefits is important, but the new health care bill makes such a job less essential.
“I am still looking for a job with benefits if possible, although it’s not my most important factor,” Metzger said. “I am not as stressed, though, because there is still that chance I can fall back on my dad’s insurance.”
English major Jennifer Burrini, has been paying for her own health insurance since she was 18 but thinks that the bill will benefit many of her peers, noting that “being approved by a comprehensive plan for an affordable price is hard.”
“It takes some of the pressure off of those of us just finding jobs and settling into our career paths that may not offer full coverage,” Burrini said. “Knowing that you have that security to fall back on is nice. It makes the process just a bit easier.”
Marketing major Tracie Jones, also said she feels some relief.
“I’m still looking for a job with benefits,” Jones said. “But I don’t have to worry about getting a job right after graduation. I have a place to live at home, and now my health insurance is taken care of.”