This week the White House unveiled new details about a plan that will allow young adults to stay covered under their parents’ health insurance policies until they’re 26-years-old. The new policy forces companies offering employer-sponsored  health plans to offer coverage for their employees’ children up to the age of 26. The rules don’t require the young adult to live with his or her parents, attend college or even be a dependent. The twenty-somethings can also be married or unmarried.

Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius estimates that 1.2 million people currently without health insurance coverage will have it because of this new rule. According to a report in the New York Times, the health department estimates that it will cost $3,380 in 2011 to cover each new insurance customer and $3500 in 2012. In 2013 it will cost about $3690 for this coverage. This equates to about a one percent increase in family premiums, according to government officials.

These new rules will begin to take effect September 23, but there are some exceptions. Companies are allowed to exclude adult children of their employees until 2014 if the children already have access to their own insurance through their employee. Some companies are offering this additional coverage now, and they aren’t waiting until the upcoming deadlines. Under the new rules, employers must give young adults a 30-day enrollment window for signing up under their parents’ coverage.

Some people feel the rules or too lenient. “Regulatory agencies may have stretched their authority in writing these rules. Adult children can live 2,000 miles away from their parents, be married and not have spoken to Mom and Dad in a year, and they could still be added to the parents’ employer-sponsored health plan just like any other child,” said James P. Gelfand, director of health policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce, to the New York Times. However, according to the Chicago Tribune, other companies are getting a jump on the new rules. Trustmark, an insurance provider to more than two million people across the US, started offering the coverage My 1. “This early implementation will ensure graduating college students maintain health insurance coverage without falling into the ranks of the uninsured,” said John Anderson, the company’s senior vice president . “This ultimately closes the possible gap in coverage that would have occurred until this fall.”