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White House Struggles to Make Millennials Like Obamacare

White House Struggles to Make Millennials Like Obamacare

You can lead a horse to water…

https://youtu.be/77EnE8-i2pc

It’s been seven years since the passage of the Affordable Care Act and the White House is still having trouble selling it to Americans, especially Millennials.

The problem is that Obamacare needs the money of healthy young people to survive, so the White House is trying a new push.

The Business Insider reports:

The White House is kicking off a big push to fix Obamacare’s largest problem

Obamacare needs millennials, so the White House is going after them.

The White House, the Department of Health and Human Services, the secretary of education, and private groups convened in Washington on Tuesday for the Affordable Care Act Millennial Outreach and Engagement Summit.

The summit was the launch of a campaign to reach out to young people and get them to sign up for plans through the exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law better known as Obamacare.

The push is important because the people signing up through the exchanges over the past few years have skewed older and have led to significant losses for some insurers offering plans through Obamacare.

Generally, people who are young and healthy pay into the system while older, sicker people are net losses for insurers, so having an older customer base can be problematic for the companies.

Yet in the first quarter of this year, the percentage of adults ages 25 to 34 lacking insurance, 15.9%, was double what it was for people ages 45 to 64 (8.1%), according to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In turn, health-insurance companies have started to cut bait on the losses and remove their plans from some states. Major insurers including Aetna, UnitedHealthcare, and Cigna have all reduced their exchange business.

Considering that Millennials played a large part in electing Obama president, it’s funny to see them rejecting one of his biggest legislative achievements.

Americans for Tax Reform explains the underlying problem:

Here’s Why Millennials Should Be Weary of Obamacare

Today, Obama held a millennial outreach summit in an attempt to revitalize Obamacare and grab more young, healthy enrollees. But millennials shouldn’t buy into it. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, David Barnes, Policy Director of Generation Opportunity, speaks the truth about Obama’s event:

“Young Americans aren’t looking for “outreach” and “engagement” from President Obama. We’re looking for affordable health-insurance plans—and ObamaCare doesn’t offer them.”

In order for Obamacare to work, there needs to be a significant portion of young healthy people to offset the cost of older, less healthy people. For a sustainable Obamacare, 40% of all enrollees need to be in the “golden” 18-34 age. However, Obamacare does not have its 40%. According to HHS, only 28% of enrollees are in this “golden” age range. While Obamacare relies on young people, it is the young people who get the brunt of the deal.

Young people today are used to having lots of choices and convenience. If Obamacare doesn’t offer those things, no amount of repackaging is going to make them want it.

Featured image via YouTube.

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Comments

Government needs to stay out of this, Obamacare is a anti-American law. It needs to be repealed!

Just how dumb do they think these millennials are?

Er…never mind.

Uh yeah, when you’ve enacted public policy that you have to ‘sell’ and ‘market’ and fine people to comply with, your policy blows and needs to be repealed. Full stop.

Younger, healthy members of the population were ALWAYS the fly in this ointment.

ObamaDoggle had to convince them that they should pay for older Americans’ health care…WAY in excess of their own perceived needs.

That was ALWAYS an epic FAIL just waiting to happen. And, of course, THAT is just ONE of the epic FAILS involved.

Memo for the Obama Administration:

Just because you put Grey Poupon and arugula on a sh** sandwich doesn’t make it any less of a sh** sandwich.

The health penalty tax. It’s almost as good as the dodo dynasty established/confirmed by the resumption of abortion rites and clinical cannibalism.

Another example of inept government meddling in matters they don’t comprehend. They should have farmed out compliance to RJ Reynolds. I mean, we’re talking about a company that has successfully sold cancer on a stick to millions of people for decades. Certainly, they could convince the masses that Obamacare is yummy.

So a bill designed to stick it to the young and healthy to pay for the chronically ill at a time when they have little need, practically no job opportunities or money and then the idiot designers think a bigger snow job will fix things? What are they smoking?

The problem is that Obamacare needs the money of healthy young people to survive

Ahhh … that’s how any insurance plan works. Premiums from customers who don’t make a claim pay for the losses of customers who do make claims.

Premiums on freighters which don’t sink at sea pay for the ones which do. Premiums on communications satellites which launch successfully pay for the ones which blow up on the launch pad. It’s not easy to imagine an insurance scheme which functions in any other way.

There’s nothing wrong with the basic idea; people with few health problems at the moment pay for the care of people who do. The problem seems to have been injecting inept government control into a system which doesn’t need hierarchical control to function.

Recall what Milton Friedman said about governments and deserts. The same idea applies to governments and insurance.

Putting an urgent call out to pajama boy.

You are desperately need at the White House.

As a private business owner, I came under the individual health plan aspect of the ACA. In 2011 I had an individual plan, a standard 80/20 with a $1,000 deductible. It was cancelled because it didn’t provide me with maternity care. Being 56 at the time, oh, and male, I felt like I didn’t need maternity care, but what do I know? Thank God for big government, which straightened me out on that.

Now I’m retired, but still part of the individual market. My cost for that same 80/20 $1000 deductible plan now would be over $1,100 per month. A catastrophic plan, 80/20 only after paying $5,500 deductible would cost me almost $500 per month. How the flick does an insurance company lose money on catastrophic plans with such ridiculously high premiums?

In the past thirty years I’ve had just one health issue that brought med bills sufficient to exceed my deductible, kidney stones twenty years ago. My point being that it isn’t just healthy millennials being targeted. Any healthy citizen is targeted to pay for their own and others’ health insurance.

No way I’m paying that for a crap plan, nor will I pay such a price for a Cadillac plan. I have no health insurance, just a bank account with emergency money carved out from my retirement account. I get dinged for no Obamacare at tax time, more and more each year, for there is no escaping this monstrosity of a government mandate. One way or another, you pay.

If/when Obamacare gets down to destroying citizens’ group health plans (they are far greater in number than individual plans and their demise has been postponed repeatedly out of political expediency) there will be an angry uprising the likes of which this country hasn’t seen in a long time.

    Henry Hawkins in reply to Henry Hawkins. | September 28, 2016 at 5:19 pm

    And don’t get me started on the inherent unfairness of targeting – for political reasons – one sector of the citizenry (individual planners) – while leaving the bulk of the citizenry (group planners) untouched.

    Ragspierre in reply to Henry Hawkins. | September 28, 2016 at 5:21 pm

    Good to see you here, HH.

    I’ve missed you. Sorry about your “health care” miseries.

    I’ve managed to avoid them, myself. Not without cost, mind you…

What’s the big deal? Just millennials that if they love their low-paying jobs and their ruinous student loans, they’ll love obamacare.

thalesofmiletus | September 29, 2016 at 8:50 am

Looks like Obamacare isn’t the raging success they keep claiming…