The WSJ has a good piece up on why the ACA is reliant on young people acting in opposition to their self-interests.
To sum up: The ACA being feasible is reliant on having young and healthy people (people who won't consume much health care) sign up to buy health insurance so as to offset the unhealthy people (people who will consume health care). If enough young and healthy people don't sign up and pay into the system, the rates will go up on the sick people who enroll, and the whole system fails.
It's basically a massive transfer of wealth from young healthy people to older, sicker people.
Accordingly, the whole program relies on having young and healthy people pay money for an insurance policy that they will very likely not need to use, and when they are least capable of affording it. The problem is, it's not really in young people's self-interest to do this.
I guess it's poetic in some way that the waves of young voters who sent Obama to the Presidency are now going to be required to put their money where their vote was.
They're going to get some hope and change, alright. It's just going to cost them.
No comments:
Post a Comment