Summary: Top Ten Ways ObamaCare Sticks It to Young Adults By Dean Clancy [Note: a .pdf version of this post can be found at the bottom of this page] ObamaCare should really be called the Unaffordable Care Act, especially when it comes to adults in their twenties and thirties. ObamaCare’s “individual mandate,” which takes full effect on January 1, 2014, requires all Americans to purchase expensive government-controlled health insurance, even if they don’t want or need it. (1) The defenders of this mandate, and especially the health insurance lobby, claim a mandate on all of us is necessary to “help the uninsured.” In fact, the mandate’s real purpose is to prevent the system’s new government-run “health exchanges” from collapsing. Young adults are being singled out as the group who will have to bear the brunt of preventing this collapse. They’re being asked to sacrifice their dollars and their freedom. Eighty percent of 20-somethings who earn more than about $18,500 a year will see their health insurance costs go up as a result of ObamaCare. In California, the cost of a basic plan for a 25-year-old male will jump as much as 92 percent, in Ohio as much as 700 percent! Meanwhile, the Administration is enforcing ObamaCare selectively, having granted more than 1,200 waivers to politically connected labor unions and corporations over the past three years, and more recently exempting all large businesses. In short, ObamaCare is unfair, unnecessary, and harmful to our health. No wonder it’s so unpopular, even before it has been fully implemented. We call on all Americans, and especially millennials, to “burn their ObamaCare card,” join the “health care draft resistance” movement, and help us hasten the replacement of government-centered care with patient-centered care. Here are the top ten ways ObamaCare sticks it to young adults: 1. Raises insurance costs for adults under 40 (on purpose) 2. Reduces access to workplace health insurance 3. Shrinks workplace health benefits 4. Reduces work-hours 5. Kills jobs 6. Increases debt 7. Raises taxes 8. Is unfair 9. Is unnecessary 10. Is insulting 1. Raises insurance costs for adults under 40 (on purpose) ObamaCare sticks it to young adults by driving up their health insurance costs. On purpose. That’s right, the law is designed to drive up costs for people in their twenties and thirties, in order to keep the new ObamaCare exchanges from collapsing. Unless a lot of young, healthy people sign up to pay for insurance through the government exchange, premiums will spiral upward as too many old and sick people sign up, which will cause the system to collapse. Thanks to ObamaCare’s numerous mandates, the health insurance in most cases will cost more than it’s actually worth, especially for young adults. Hence the need for a mandate requiring people to pay into the system. The young are, in effect, being drafted into compulsory national service. How does ObamaCare drive up rates? Primarily by forcing insurance companies to accept all applicants, regardless of age or health status (“guaranteed issue”) and by forcing them to charge all applicants roughly the same price (“community rating”). These mandates make insurance more expensive, especially for healthier folks, some of whom naturally respond to the higher expense by becoming uninsured -- the opposite of the law’s alleged goal. Younger people tend to be healthier. That’s why they also tend to be uninsured -- the high cost isn’t worth it for them, relative to the benefit. The largest negative effects of guaranteed issue and community thus fall on younger people. ObamaCare imposes a host of other mandates. One is to make insurers cover adults up to age 26 on their parents’ policy. That sounds nice, until we realize that it costs each of us an ad
