Dana Lam was insured under her parent's health plan until the end of 2014, thanks to a provision of the Affordable Care Act that allows young adults to stay on family health insurance until they turn 26.
The arrangement worked out well until she needed treatment for depression. Lam knew that if she used her parents' health plan to see a psychotherapist or psychiatrist, her visit would show up on their insurance statements.
She wasn't ready to talk to them about her mental health issues. "I was just so afraid of having that conversation with them," she says.
She was able to use her school's free counseling services instead, but there was a catch. "Medication is really what I needed," Lam says. She couldn't afford to pay for medicine without using insurance, she says, so she didn't take any.
When she graduated, Lam's part-time job didn't come with benefits, so she stayed on her parent's insurance and she stopped getting help of any kind. "I looked around for free mental health care or community centers, but I didn't find much of anything," Lam says.
[For more of this story, written by Maanvi Singh, go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/healt...ps-the-need-for-care]
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