Kathryn E., Kansas City, KS


Dr. Kathryn E., a pediatrician at the University of Kansas, heralds the dependent care coverage provision for two very important reasons: her daughters Alexandra and Samantha.

In the case of her youngest daughter, Ali, who was born 19 years ago with a congenital heart defect, it is a tremendous relief for Kathryn to know that she can extend coverage for her daughter whose condition requires regular maintenance and occasional major surgeries.

Since her daughter's birth, Kathryn has anticipated the time when Ali would no longer be covered. "When she was first diagnosed, it seemed like a long time in the future," Kathryn says. "When she's two, you don't worry about that; when she's 19, you do."

Ali was born with complex transposition of the great arteries. She receives annual exams, which usually cost more than $1,000, and every few years a comprehensive evaluation which can mount to $10,000. She'll need more procedures as the artificial heart valve that she has had since 2006 becomes calcified - as they always do, eventually. If she requires open heart surgery it will cost well over $100,000 dollars. Even with two physician parents, insurance is critically important to the family to avoid financial difficulties.

Until the dependent care provision, Ali was scheduled to fall off her parents' insurance at age 23. Now she has the opportunity to stay on until 26, which gives the Wesleyan University sophomore a much better chance to receive her next major surgery while still on her family's plan. And that in turn ought to allow her to focus on her future: the government major is considering either med school or law school after graduation.

But while it's true that Kathryn has been concerned about Ali's coverage, it's no less true that she's also concerned about the health insurance prospects for her older daughter -- who doesn't have a pre-existing condition.

"I worry a little bit that parents of young adults will read this and say, 'Well, that's not my kid' -- and that's true, most kids don't have congenital heart disease," says Kathryn. "But I look at my other daughter who is a healthy 21-year-old graduating from college in a bad job market; who for several years may not have decent employer-based coverage. That is almost everybody's kid. She plays ultimate Frisbee, she drives, and accidents happen."

"People chance it," she says, about those going without insurance. These reforms, she says, can help: "If people would understand it's not safe to not have health insurance, I think they would understand why we need to do this."

She hopes that her older daughter, who is applying for Teach for America, will be able to get her own insurance within the next few years. And she hopes that the insurance situation will improve as reforms are enacted: Speaking as a doctor and a mother, she looks to a better system, "We have to have something better for both of my girls and for their friends."

Meghan H., Kansas City, MO


Meghan H. watched as her little brother bounced from one Missouri walk-in clinic to another, seeking treatment for allergies that seemed to be worsening, causing recurring sinus infections and headaches.

Within a few months, Meghan was at a hospital with her family being told that her brother might not survive the brain surgery he urgently needed. The problem: a routine sinus infection had gone unchecked, spread to his brain and now threatened his life.

Meghan believes that it need not have happened that way. "Had my brother had the opportunity to have health care coverage that was affordable, had he had a doctor that he could go to, I truly believe his infection would not have gone that far. He would still be the active, healthy, able-to-do-whatever-he-wanted 21-year-old he should be."

But now, because of the toll of the infection, he suffers short-term memory loss, lingering seizures, and is 70% blind. He is, she adds, "very restricted in what he can do in a job, his career and his ability to live a normal life."

The young man, who had run track in college and was working in landscaping to earn money is now considered disabled, putting him on the rolls of Americans covered by disability insurance.

Meghan sees how dependent care coverage could have made a massive difference. "Cases like my brother's exhibit one of the primary problems with our healthcare system," she says. "Lack of access to affordable health insurance and primary care doctors often results in diseases progressing unnecessarily, resulting in a huge cost to both the patient and taxpayers in the end."

Currently, Meghan is living without health insurance. She's looking for a job that will cover her. She keenly understands just how important it is to have coverage.

Emily S., Omaha, NE

Emily S. regularly sees two rheumatologists, an opthamologist, a dermatologist, a neurologist, an internist and a few more specialists.

She's 20 years-old.

At 19, after two years of unexplained symptoms, she was diagnosed with a chronic, autoimmune disease called Behcet's Syndrome. Only 15, 000 - 20,000 Americans are thought to have the disease, which affects the veins and can cause rheumatoid arthritis, as well as episodic flare-ups that cause open sores in the mouth, eyes, nose and throughout the body.

"When I first got sick, I would have flare-ups about every 8 months, but they got more severe as they went on," she says. "I had to get a CAT scan, MRIs, a colonoscopy at 19. The long and short of it is that if I hadn't had my parents insurance I would have had tens of thousands of dollars of bills."

The last few years have found Emily reconsidering what she can and will do with her life, a decision that's been influenced by her need to maintain health insurance. The political science and communications major at University of Nebraska has public service and non-profit ambitions, but knows the challenges posed by those jobs.

"If you want to be on a campaign or work at a nonprofit, those jobs don't have benefits when you first start out, so that posed a very serious problem." Because, as she points out, "being uncovered is not an option."

She considered other alternatives: "My choice was essentially to stay on my parents' insurance and go directly to grad school, or directly to law school, because the condition would technically be pre-existing," she recalls. "So, if at any point my insurance dropped I'd be in big trouble."

Now with the dependent care provision, she can seek the non-profit or campaign work she thinks will best serve her career aspirations.

"I don't think I understood until a few months ago how radically this changed what I'm able to do," she says. "It's given me the flexibility to pursue a career and not go bankrupt because of a health condition that I can't control."

Currently, Emily has the disease managed after a series of trials with different drug treatments and she's had some time to reflect on what she's been going through.

"It's pretty crappy to be diagnosed with a lifelong illness at 17," she says, "but it's a silver lining that I can make a difference and help people conceptualize that there are people from all walks of life who have issues with healthcare. I think a lot of the talk about healthcare has been centered on older people in America, and people my age don't think about it."

She concludes: "It's really important to get young people into this conversation because they're the ones who are going to be living in the world where this reform is happening."

Keesha C., Baldwin, NY


Keesha, 25, expected some discomfort when she visited the dentist, but once her cleaning and exam were over, she got even more than she bargained for.

Unbeknownst to her, and her father, she had been dropped from his insurance coverage.

Keesha had to pay out of pocket, an expense she wasn't prepared for. "Thank god the visit wasn't out of the ordinary," she says. "I'm in college - it was hard just to pay as much as I did, but I'm lucky it didn't break me. What was really unfortunate was not knowing ahead of time."

It wasn't the first time that the 25-year-old American University political science grad student had been dropped from coverage. It had happened erroneously once before when she was 23, and that time her father had been able to provide the documentation to show that she was still in school, and therefore still covered.

Given the shaky history with her current insurance coverage, Keesha and her father are delighted that in September he'll be able to cover her under the new dependent coverage provision. According to Keesha, he's been following the bill closely since its passage, asking his insurance company when they'd extend the coverage. "He's been asking since March about what would happen, and what they've said all along is 'we'll wait until that time comes." Just a couple of weeks ago they were saying we'd be covered in September."

Currently, however, Keesha is without insurance. She's been looking but hasn't found a plan that she could afford. "My dad and my aunt helped me," she says. "We looked at different plans, but as a college student, it's not easy to find an insurance that's not crazy expensive, especially when you're trying to pay for college and you're not able to work as much."

For now, she's just trying to play it safe. "Unfortunately, you walk around with a black cloud - 'I hope I don't get sick. I hope I don't get into a car accident.' I guess for me the good thing is that I know in a couple weeks, I'll have insurance again so it's just waiting out that couple of weeks."

Keesha will graduate in May of 2011 and remain covered until her birthday in August. After college she aims to get into advocacy. She hopes to put her experiences, both from college and life, to work helping others. She's happy she's entering the workforce at a time when health care for Americans is expanding.

"We live in a country that talks about the American Dream and people being able to have their rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness." For this to happen, she reasons, "we have to give them some sort of support."

Kristin K., Ft. Myers, FL


When Kristin accepted her diploma in Environmental Studies from Florida Gulf Coast University in 2009, she assumed she was ending the student chapter of her life, at least for a while.

But in fact, despite having gone into the workforce and found a part-time job, she's back less than a year later, taking a course simply so she can stay on her mom's insurance.

At this time in her life, taking an extra class is both costly and complicated for the analytical chemist who in a lab that tests waste and drinking water.

"I take the course twice a week, so I have to leave work about 20 minutes early, which I feel bad about," she says. "At a lab, there's so many things to do at the end of the day and I have to rely on my boss to have her do stuff for me so that I can catch up the next morning."

The course in natural resources management is costing Kristin about $1000, but until she learns whether or not her mother's employer is going to offer dependent coverage, it's the price she has to pay to stay covered.

Kristin wanted full-time employment with insurance, but wasn't able to find a job like that in this economy. She even considered going without insurance, but her mother, a registered nurse, would not permit that.

"I feel like I wouldn't mind not having insurance, but my mom says I should be covered. She sees stuff every day that you would not believe, and she says to me all the time, 'Kristin, you're so lucky to be healthy.'"

"I know she's right," she continues, "being insured also means I don't have to worry about getting sick. I have a few thousand saved up, but if something happens to me, I'll be covered. Once you get sick, you don't have savings for very long."

So for now, Kristin continues to go to work and take the course, and because her parent's house, where she rents, has been foreclosed on, she's also in the process of moving. It's a lot, but the 23-year-old is staying focused, even studying for the GRE in what spare time remains so that she's ready when she decides to get her masters degree.

Things are complicated now, but Kristin expects to weather the situation and use all of this -- her work, her schooling and her experiences - toward her big ambitions. "My goal twenty years in the future is to work with the current president of the United States on environmental issues."

Ben G., Kennebunk, ME


As a young, politically active college student from Maine, Ben G. is familiar with the well-known quote from Maine's native son/businessman/Senate Majority Leader/Special Envoy, George Mitchell: "no one should be guaranteed success ... but everyone should have a fair chance to succeed."

In part because of the dependent coverage provision, Ben now has his fair chance to succeed.

When Ben graduates from the University of Maine in 2012, he'll be able to stay on his mother's health insurance. For any young graduate this would bring added security, but for Ben this is extremely important. Ben has a hereditary condition passed down from his grandfather and his father, a condition which cut his father's life short at 51.

"My disease is a hereditary liver problem that they haven't quite put a finger on yet, but it essentially causes Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis, which leads to cirrhosis," explains Ben. "Because of the bill, the plan I have through my mom announced they would meet the "under 25" threshold, meaning that if I don't go right to law school after graduation, I have time to find a job and start paying."

For a young man with a pre-existing condition, this can be a life-altering difference, especially for someone who is drawn to politics, a sphere in which you don't typically jump right into high-paying, benefit-rich jobs.

"Before if I were to take a low-paying job or an internship, if I were to lose coverage, I could never get it back because of my pre-existing condition," says Ben. "Now I have a little breathing room while I go out and hammer down what I really want to do with my life."

"I've been very politically involved since I was a kid and I'd like to work on a few campaigns, but the nature of campaign work is that you may have a job for three months and if your candidate loses, you're done," he continues. "Even if they win, you might be done for six months until the cycle picks up. Under this legislation, I can give that a try until I'm on my feet."

Meanwhile, Ben cannot reverse his liver's deterioration, but he can take steps to slow it. He eats extremely well, exercises regularly and every few months makes the five-and-a-half hour trip to Yale to see a specialist. It is expected that within twenty years he'll need a liver transplant, but he knows his behaviors now can help to influence the outcome.

"There's a little peace of mind knowing that if I do the right things, I'll be ok, so if I go out and am responsible with my money, pay the bills, with this legislation, I feel I don't need to also worry about getting sick. If I do my part, I'm going to be fine."

Perhaps Ben will develop a political career that rivals George Mitchell's, or perhaps he'll find his footing elsewhere, but one thing is certain, he's not going to be held back by his hereditary condition.

"I don't have control over this, it is something I was born with, something I combat. I shouldn't be forced into a situation economically where I can't contribute to society and play a role because of something out of my control."

Echoing Mitchell, he adds: "What this does is give everybody a fair shot at getting out there and being productive."

Emily E., Ann Arbor, MI


To many, C-Span is a snooze. Not to Emily E., who says she engaged in a "C-Span marathon" in the days leading up to the health care reform vote.

More than just an academic interest, Emily was following because of the very real implications to her life. Among other things, she wanted to know if upon college graduation she would be able to stay on her parent's health insurance plan, or if she would be forced off to get her own insurance.

It mattered to her because she was born with Common Variable Immune Deficiency (CVID), a disease which leaves her virtually without immunities. Since birth, this congenital disease has left her vulnerable to severe illness, nearly costing her her life as a baby. She's been receiving immunoglobulin infusions and medications since she was 3. And while battling to stay healthy and productive, she and her parents have also been battling the health insurance industry to keep her covered.

"Insurance companies hate me because of the medication I have to take for the immune deficiency. The last time data was released on the cost of my medication, my dose was $120,000 per year. That is just for the medicationÉ Essentially, I am the perfect example of everything insurance companies love to hate because I cost them money," she says. And trust me - it's not like I woke up one day and decided I wanted to have an immune deficiency."

Currently, the 18-year-old Kentucky native attends the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, where she's studying Environmental Science and South Asian studies. She thinks she wants to go to graduate school following undergrad, but because of dependent coverage, she's relieved to have a choice.

"That definitely makes me feel better," she says. "The idea of me graduating and not having insurance -- I was either going to have to pay out of pocket or find a job right out of school that would provide me those types of benefits. I can't not have it. Also, now they can't deny me because of my pre-existing condition. Either way, I feel a whole lot better."

So do her parents, who Emily describes as moderate voters who closely followed and supported health care reform. "My parents were thrilled," says Emily. "The health care issue was central to my family."

These days, she;s focusing mostly on her studies and watching much less C-Span. She's not worried that dependent coverage will go away, or at least she tries not to think about it. "I can't even begin to fathom," she says. "It would put me back in the limbo of ' I'll be graduating in less than two years and will be without insurance.' That is not a pleasant thought."

Chase C., Seattle, WA


Chase Cooper is a healthy 23-year-old, but that doesn't mean he can't get sick.

Last year when swine flu was rampaging its way from coast to coast, he had the bad luck to contract it.

But worse than contracting it was where he contracted it: away from home and out of range of the in-network doctor mandated by the limited health care coverage he had. "I had insurance that was basically like, 'unless you get in a car accident in this ten mile zone, you're out of luck."

Chase went to the emergency room to have his flu treated. "In the grand scheme of things, the flu was not that big of a deal," Chase says. The bill for the emergency room, however, was. "I was helped by my parents or I would have gone bankrupt. I can't imagine if anything very serious had occurred, or if I had a condition that required therapies. My standard of life would have gone down. I dodged a bullet, I was very fortunate."

Now Chase doesn't have to worry as much about illness or the associated costs. This fall thanks to the dependent coverage bill he can return to his step-mother's high quality health insurance plan."

For the Whitman College graduate who works in the non-profit sector, this means a return to greater coverage and the opportunity to get the preventive wellcare his plan didn't cover. He plans to visit his dentist and his opthamologist, and get an annual check-up, things he either avoided or did sparingly when he was paying out of pocket.

And no longer will he be shelling out $350 a month, which represented about one-third of his take home pay. With rent and car insurance, Chase found himself living paycheck to paycheck. "Ideally, I would have been saving that money. I'm not building up any savings or reserves to make me feel very stable or solvent."

Chase acknowledges that he and his peers are pretty much a healthy group, but as his experience demonstrated, things can happen. He sees dependent coverage as a good thing on multiple levels. "It provides security for people right out of college who are trying to start careers or at unstable times of their lives. Those people who can't afford insurance, who can't get hurt, still end up at the ER, and those costs get shifted over to you and me. Hopefully, this will bring down costs for everybody. As a consequence, it's beneficial at an individual level and a societal level as well."

Cassandra T., St. Louis, MO


As a young adult with Crohn's disease, a chronic inflammation of the intestines, Cassandra learned the ins and outs of how to navigate the health care system. Well, parts of it anyway.

With each of the normal transitions that accompany working one's way to the American dream - graduating college, taking a part-time job, expanding to full-time work -- Cassandra had to reacquaint herself with new, and often Byzantine health care policies, limits and stipulations.

Further, while seeking work she had to be more discriminating than others in order for her to maintain coverage, while simultaneously being concerned about whether revealing her condition would affect her candidacy at certain jobs.

"It's nerve-wracking because you have to balance that fine line -- do I tell them that I have the condition and how will that impact their decision-making to hire me," she says.

For this reason, the 2005 DePaul graduate who at 28 is unable to avail herself of the dependent coverage provision still welcomes it as a step in the right direction for those who are coming up now.

"It would have been a lot better to have the opportunity to have health insurance and be covered, because every job I went to for that was one of the main questions I asked, 'what's the coverage', and if it wasn't enough, I would need the income to complement that, and coming straight out of college you just don't make a crazy amount of money."

As it happened, she took available jobs, working for her parents, as an independent contractor, as a bartender, all the time aiming to keep the coverage seamless. But it wasn't, and at times there were gaps. Because Crohn's disease requires maintenance medication and periodic hospitalizations for treatment, Cassandra saw her out of pocket payments skyrocket. Within a few years her medical bills mounted to nearly $500,000.

A grant from the University of Chicago has helped Cassandra pay down her massive debt load but she acknowledges that she was fortunate to have others who would vouch for her, citing her character and strong work ethic to get the grant. "I had a lot of people on my side who were able to say 'she's been through a lot and x, y and z about me' but not everybody has that."

"I remember hearing on the radio about how can we eliminate the growth of poverty and they kept coming back to universal health care coverage," she explains. "People go into massive amounts of debt just because of an illness, they have to remortgage or lose their home just because of their illness. If they had a safety net or something in place, it wouldn't have to happen."

Cassandra is now returning to school to get a degree in the healthcare profession. She wants to use her experiences to help others.

Catherine M., Philadelphia, PA

Catherine M. received her B.A from Drexel University in 2009, majoring in International Area Studies, with a focus on justice and human rights.

This fall, she expects to take that degree and apply for a job making espresso-based drinks at a coffee-shop chain.

With her education and employment experience, which includes interning and working for nearly three years at a law firm, she thought she would have a decent shot finding a job that fits her background.

"I probably applied to 500 - 600 jobs over the course of the last year," she says. "It's rough, it's very difficult out there. You get a follow-up requesting more info, then you receive the 'well, you're not a perfect fit for the job', which I'm sure plenty of other people my age are experiencing right now too."

Catherine is 22, and considers herself to be pretty healthy overall, but she is not comfortable being without health care. "I need the peace of mind. I drive to and from work everyday, so the likelihood of my getting into an accident -- knock on wood, I never have - but what if, god forbid, something like that happened?, she says. "If I don't have health insurance, I don't even know where I would begin to pay for that kind of medical expenses."

Right now she has contract work for a national pharmacy chain, which she says is full-time hours, but not considered full-time employment, and therefore does not include benefits. So when the work ends in August, she's packing up and moving down to Raleigh, N.C., where she's learned that the cost of living is more affordable.

She knows she's not alone in allowing her health insurance dictate her major life choices. "A lot of my friends are in the same boat or worse than I am. Actually, the girl who graduated with the highest GPA in my major is working at Walmart back home because she can't find a job."

And while Catherine's age would make her eligible for the new Dependent Coverage provision, at this time her mother's insurance denies all dependent coverage. They're currently exploring the situation with the insurer.

The whole situation is frightening and frustrating to Catherine. "I don't understand why the well-being of each and every citizen has taken so long to address," she says. "Even us kids out of college, yes, we're adults, but we don't have jobs. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to take care of ourselves? The environment that we've graduated into is completely different than that of our parents. I just don't understand why it should be so expensive to maintain being healthy."

Nabil H., Simsbury, CT


When Nabil graduates from Georgetown University next year, he can be pretty confident of two things: He'll have a job and he'll have health insurance.

A job with health insurance! In this economy, it's every college senior's dream, but it doesn't quite work out that way. He's likely to get the job because for the last two years, he's been a part-time groundfloor employee with a business venture launched by two other Georgetown alumni. The health insurance will be courtesy of his mother and made possible by the new dependent coverage provision.

Down the road, the company for which he works, Compass Partners, which incubates social entrepreneurial ventures and offers social business training, aims to provide health insurance the usual way for all its employees. But in this embryonic stage of its development, it needs to focus all of its resources on growth and expansion.

Nabil is seeing firsthand how the dependent coverage provision will help Compass Partners and could facilitate other young Americans in their efforts to innovate and build new small businesses.

"I think it creates a more certain environment for entrepreneurs like us trying to start off something really small that requires a lot of attention. It's a very important piece of the puzzle. It allows young people to start their own businesses without risking serious financial harm to themselves if they got sick."

In addition to his full senior coursework in International Political Economy, Nabil puts in about 25 hours a week at Compass Partners where he's the DC regional director, coordinating three local campuses and working to add more. It's enough to keep him constantly busy and he's grateful that he hasn't had to spend a lot of time worrying about or plotting his post-graduation health insurance scenario. And it helps that his mother works in the health insurance industry.

"I talked to my mom a lot about it -- because of her job she has to be informed -- and she mentioned that this was one of the provisions that would be very useful for people my age who might not necessarily be able to find a job after graduation, or who are doing their own thing, like I am."

Nabil and his 20-something employers will continue to do their own thing, building a company with big goals and big ideas aimed at improving the world. And in part they'll be able to do it because of the dependent care provision.

"The new law makes it so that we won't necessarily have to jump into a job just to take the benefits. We'll be able to see our business out until it's successful and we can afford to pay for health insurance. It's really nice to have this security, to have lower turnover and more stability in our personal lives."

Paul R., Carlisle, PA


With a son about to graduate college, Paul R., the aquatics director at Dickinson College, a liberal arts college in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was following healthcare reform closely, particularly the Dependent Coverage provision. He even had a New York Times alert set up to let him know when the bill was signed into law.

"I emailed Human Resources the moment the bill was signed," he said. "I asked them, 'What's going on? What are we going to do about this?' I got a response that said, 'We'll get back to you.'"

Along with 12 - 15 fellow Dickinson colleagues in similar situations with children about to graduate off their parents' insurance, Paul hoped the college would take a proactive position and immediately extend dependent care coverage for these staff and faculty children until their 26th birthday.

A week passed before the administration responded, saying they had evaluated the situation and they were going to offer dependent coverage beginning with the next enrollment period - in July of 2011. That would leave Paul's son and the others without coverage for more than a year.

Paul had researched extension coverage such as Cobra and had learned it would cost anywhere between $400 - $600 per month. And Paul considered himself one of the lucky ones--his son was healthy with no pre-existing conditions. He knew others from Dickinson whose plight would have been much more expensive and complicated.

"So basically we started an email barrage," says Paul. "One of my good friends sent an email to human resources with cc:s and everybody started replying to HR. We said it would be really helpful. We gave them examples of why we hoped the college would step up and do this. For a lot of us, it was simply, 'if we un-enroll them and then re-enroll them next July, isn't there a cost there and administrative paperwork to put them back in the system?'" Wouldn't it make more sense, they wondered, to "just do it."

Paul says as a group they kept up the inquiries and the pressure, ready with arguments that highlighted not just the practicality, but also effect on the workplace environment. Not only would paperwork be eased, but it would allow for continuity for these children who had regular doctors. College-age students, they reminded HR, were a relatively safe group, from an insurance standpoint. But just as important, Paul said, was that the college could make a statement about how it values its employees.

"If you want to maintain a positive environment and keep morale high, take care of your employees. This is a relatively inexpensive way to do this and to make a statement that you care about them and you're going to take care of them."

After a month or so of lobbying the question moved from HR to Budget and Planning and then all the way up to the top tier of the administration.

Following the concerted efforts of political science professors, swim coaches, groundskeepers and other involved parents, the president of Dickinson made an announcement: They had changed their position and they would begin covering dependent children immediately.

Paul was delighted, mostly. "We didn't have to have rallies, make signs, there were no sit-ins - that kind of disappointed me," he says, laughing. "We didn't have to, the college did the right thing."

Now his son is graduated, safely covered, and looking for work. Paul is coaching swim still. He is happy with the outcome and the efforts he put into it. "I just think it's the right thing to do. Colleges can drop a big chunk of change on renovating a building or something like that. We just said take a piece of that and put it into your employees."

Isbah R., University of Texas at Austin


When Isbah Raja was 18 years old, she started to have symptoms of fatigue, making it hard to concentrate or complete her school work. In the same year, her father transferred jobs, and her family had to find private insurance coverage. However, when her parent's tried to sign her up, the new insurance company denied her coverage based on my history of fatigue. She was left with no options, so she limited my visits to the doctor and hoped that her health wouldn't get worse. She went uninsured.

A year later, she began losing weight uncontrollably and an entire constellation of symptoms sprang up. She visited a Rheumatologist who diagnosed her with Lupus. Lupus is a chronic auto-immune disease that can result in joint pain, hair loss, loss of appetite, and much worse if untreated. At the time, her father transferred jobs where he would be provided with health insurance from his company. Unfortunately, the insurer again denied her coverage for her pre-existing condition. Her parents, who already pay for her college education, would now have to cover all her medical bills as well. In order to reduce costs, She bought generic drugs, instead of the prescription brand she was supposed to take, and she limited my visits to the doctor as much as possible. The stress of living with a serious medical condition, being a student, and worrying about finances was an experience that she hope to never face again.

Fortunately, her family kept fighting and her father's employer coverage eventually did cover her. And thanks to the new health care law, her coverage won't just terminate when she graduates. She will be able to maintain my insurance up to age 26, even as she pursues a career. She can visit my specialist whenever she needs to without paying outrageous medical bills, she can get regular blood tests to make sure that her Lupus hasn't progressed to her organs, and she can buy brand name prescriptions without financially straining my parents. And if she has to leave her father's plan, or he changes jobs again, she knows that an insurance company will no longer be able to deny me because of my pre-existing condition. Her 15 year old sister, who was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, can also not be denied coverage because of her pre-existing condition. The new law has not only given her the freedom to stay covered, but it has also freed her family from the fear that an insurer could drop me at any moment, or force her to limit or go without treatment.

Having seen the impact of the new law, she has become an advocate for health care reform within her community. She has participated in local events discussing her story, and She has worked with Young Invincibles to raise awareness about health care reform at the UT campus.

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