For most youth adults, May is a month of looking forward. The month of May heralds summer vacation, and for those graduating from high school or may be from college, it offers a diploma with a stamp of independence.

But Nicole Daley, a 22-year-old type 1 diabetic in New York City, warily eyes this impending milestone. She’ll be graduating from the Fashion organization of Technology this month, and eight months later she would lose dependent status under her parent’s employer-sponsored plan—a deadline that has set her scrambling for health insurance. The clock is ticking: If she fails to protected coverage before her current plan expires, future carriers would view her diabetes as a pre-existing condition, and she'll be forced to foot the bill for her diabetes concern for at least a year, maybe indefinitely.

Most jobs available to recent graduates like Daley are low wage or even temporary—the type that typically offer limited or no health benefits. She is working part time for a little marketing company, but the company can’t take her on full time. As a result, she is considering parting her job to find something full time or leaving New York City altogether, where the cost of living, combined with her medical fixed cost—more than $1,000 a month, she estimates—is too much to bear.