Ask the Expert: Insurer can't sue you for premium

My group health plan at work will cover my 27-year-old daughter, but only if I sign a form saying I am fully responsible for paying her premium. What if I can't afford to pay it in the future? If I sign this, and then can't pay, will the insurer sue me for the premium?

No. Signing the form merely acknowledges that your employer isn't responsible for the premiums. If you don't pay them, the insurer will cancel your daughter's coverage.

Your employer's plan will cover her, thanks to a recent New York law that requires group health plans to make insurance available to dependent children through age 29 - i.e., until they turn 30.

Don't confuse this state law with the new federal law, which says group health plans must insure children until age 26. The federal law applies to all employer-sponsored plans; New York's law applies only to policies sold by insurers, not to employers that self-insure. To qualify for coverage under either law, your adult child must have no access to other health insurance. Under the New York law, he or she also must be an unmarried state resident. But neither law requires that your child live with you, be a student, or be your financial dependent.

As you've discovered, the state law doesn't require employers to subsidize this coverage. If you (or your daughter) stop paying the premium in the future, her insurance will be canceled retroactively.

If the insurer has paid her doctors for services they performed after her policy lapsed, it retrieves those payments electronically. In that worst-case scenario, the doctors could then sue your daughter for payment; but they couldn't sue you.

The bottom line Insurers don't sue you if you stop paying premiums. They just cancel your policy.

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