Young people will be able to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until the age of 27 under the Affordable Health Care for America Act, legislation introduced by House members today in Washington D.C.

The health care reform legislation will also include a public option and bar health insurance companies from discriminating against clients on the basis of pre-existing conditions.

“It opens the door to those who have been shut out of the medical system for far too long,” said Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, at a press event held at the Capitol this morning.

Young people 19-24 years old make up the highest percentage of uninsured individuals in the United States, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization specializing in public health studies. The foundation states that 30 percent of the age group did not have coverage in 2007, and that was before the economic recession.

Monique Luse, with the Y.I. Want Change Coalition, a group composed of over 20 youth organizations including Campus Progress, said that she worried over how she would be able to continue to afford health insurance in the volatile job market.

Luse, 27 and diagnosed with hypertension, told reporters she was forced to make difficult financial decisions between paying for medicine and other basic living expenses like transportation, after losing health care coverage when she left Georgetown Law School.

“I had to decide whether I was going to get a metro pass or walk 2 miles to work,” Luse said. “No one should be without health care. We can’t wait any longer.”