best insurance plan for a 20-30 year old

Life? Auto? Home? Health? Renters?

I was on the LSU student health insurance plan a few years ago and remember it being pretty good.

Do they still sell those catastrophic plans on campus? I had one for a time when I was in school. But I had heard that the O'care regs were going to basically eliminate them.

Are you the only kid on the plan? If not, tell Pops dropping you won't change things. If you are the only kid on the plan, consider reimburing Pops for the amount extra he pays to cover you.

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See how much an individual plan would cost him each month in 2015. Everything is going up. Might not be too much of a difference.

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but are you sure you lose a dependency exemption if a child/relative gets a subsidy through the exchange?

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We went through some training on ACA a couple of weeks ago, and this is what we were told.

If a child is treated as a dependent on the parents tax return, then it's the parent that has to be subsidy eligible, including covering the kid. So if the parent was eligible to cover the kid on their employment plan, the parent won't be eligible for a subsidy for themselves or for the dependent.

Alternatively, you can make the kid independent and not claim a dependent exemption for the kid on the parent return. This would mean using the kid's income to qualify. But if he makes too little, he won't get a subsidy either as there is a minimum income to get the subsidy.

If he falls below minimum income, what is "supposed" to happen if he's independent is he goes on Medicaid, but with Jindal not accepting the Medicaid expansion, the kid may fall between the max for Medicaid and the min for a subsidy.

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So basically you're saying that if the kid wants health insurance and the parent doesn't want to pay the additional premium through their employer then the parent loses the right to claim an exemption on the federal return assuming the kid goes to the exchange and gets a subsidy., even if the parent still provides over 1/2 of the support for the kid?

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The way the ACA was designed, was that kids under age 26 would stay on the parent's plan from their employer, if they have one. If a parent chooses not to go that route, then, that's fine, but they can't claim a subsidy for the child (because as long as an employer-provided plan meets the affodability and minimum coverage rules, subsides are not available) (and it only has to be affordable for the employee, if the family coverage exceeds the 9.5 percent rule but the employee coverage meets it, too bad).

So the way around that is to make the kid no longer be a dependent, then the kid might (might) qualify for a subsidy.

It's similar to the rules regarding education credits. If the parent is ineligible to claim the credit, sometimes it might make sense for the parent to not claim the kid, and let the kid claim the credit for himself. This makes sese especially if the credit is phased out for the parent.