SB 5728: Creating the young adult affordable health care program

SB 5728 would create an incentive for young adults to leave their parents’ health insurance plan and obtain their own personal health savings account. The insurance commissioner would develop the program and ensure access to private commercial health care products, certified by the office of the insurance commissioner as qualifying plans with health savings accounts with an accompanying catastrophic health insurance plan. The program would provide a subsidy for qualifying young adults, ages nineteen to twenty-six, with annual incomes below one hundred thousand dollars, and the subsidy must be for one-half of the premium cost of a health savings account with the accompanying catastrophic health insurance plan. The subsidies would terminate when the young adult turned twenty-six and would be funded with federal dollars to the greatest extent possible. The health savings account would be set up as a portable account owned by the young adult that would be available for them to take with them if they left Washington and it is restricted to United States citizens living in Washington.