If the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has had a profound effect on the insurance status for young adults, it stands to reason that it would have a similarly significant impact on the number one reason that young adults are hospitalized: Childbirth.
A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine finds that PPACA has led to an increase in the percentage of births covered by private insurers, presumably as a result of the health law’s provision that requires insurers to cover the children of their beneficiaries until the age of 26.
The 2.5 percent increase in privately insured births among young mothers may seem small, but it represents a shift of hundreds of thousand of births to a different payment system.
Indeed, the rise in privately insured births has corresponded with a decline in the percentage of baby deliveries covered by Medicaid as well as drop in the number of uninsured deliveries.
“Our study shows that the young-adult provision was associated with a significant increase in private coverage and a significant decrease in Medicaid coverage of childbirth among women 19 to 26 years of age,” the report said in its conclusion. “As such, it suggests a shift in financing of childbirth from Medicaid to private insurance in this population.”
Granted, the impact of the PPACA on pregnancy care might have been even greater in past years, when a far greater proportion of women gave birth before 26. In fact, new research finds that the average American woman now gives birth to her first child at 26.3 years of age, compared to 24.9 in 2000.
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