GOP Rep. On Allowing Young Adults To Stay On Parents’ Health Insurance: ‘What Business Is It Of The Government?’

FORT GARLAND, Colorado — Rep. Scott Tipton (R-CO) doesn’t have 99 problems, but the government allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health care plans is one.

In an interview after a town hall on Tuesday, ThinkProgress asked Tipton about specific protections in Obamacare, including that people with pre-existing conditions can’t be denied coverage by insurance companies. Tipton, no fan of the landmark health care law, used the opportunity to criticize Obamacare’s protections for young adults that allows them to stay on their parents’ health insurance until they turn 26. “What business is it of the government?” Tipton asked:

KEYES: What about something like, one of the regulations in Obamacare says that people with pre-existing conditions can’t be denied coverage. For someone with leukemia, do you think it should be against the law for insurance companies to be able to deny them, or do you think that shouldn’t be a federal law?

TIPTON: Glad you brought that up. We actually have legislation ready to go. I visited with Congressman Price, a medical doctor, to be able to look at these state exchanges. You want to make sure it’s affordable as well, it’s competitive, we aren’t bankrupting somebody, to be able to address pre-existing conditions. If you want to be able to keep your children on your health care insurance policy, people are touting until age 26. My question is, what business is it of the government? If you want to keep your kids on until they’re 30, 40, what business is it of the government?

Contra Tipton’s assertions that families can “keep your kids on until they’re 30, 40,” most insurance companies only allowed parents to keep dependents on their plan until they turned around 22 prior to Obamacare’s passage. Keeping dependents on a plan until they’re 40 was (and is) not an option.

A new study found that in the two years since this provision of Obamacare was enacted, 6.6 million young adults now have health insurance through their parents’ plans. Unsurprisingly, the new protection is extremely popular, enjoying 71 percent support in a recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

ThinkProgress later pressed Tipton on whether he supported a federal law that would protect people with pre-existing conditions from being denied health insurance. He refused to say.