Young Americans under the age of 30 remain the highest percentage of the population who remain uninformed, or least familiar with the Affordable Care Act, (ACA).
A recent Gallup poll shows that 37 percent of Americans 30 or under are unfamiliar with the law more than two months after the exchange launch on October 1st. The new poll numbers might raise concerns among supporters of the ACA, as the success of the law largely depends on a high enrollment percentage of young healthy consumers.
Meanwhile, initial figures suggest the Obama administration is falling far short of its goal of signing up young healthy customers and that could become a problem that might undermine the roll out of the law even more so than the glitch-ridden website. However, the websites ‘glitches’ are probably influencing their decision also as most of that age group are pretty ‘tech savvy’ and are concerned with security and other issues involved with the site itself.
Experts say the ACA needs 40 percent of all enrollees to be between 18 and 34 years old known as the ‘invincibles’. They are the ones who generally are the healthiest, therefore the least expensive to care for and are necessary to subsidize older and more expensive enrollees. While the administration isn’t releasing numbers, out of six states running their own exchanges that are keeping score say that only 28 percent fit into the young and healthy category.
In interviews among residents in that age group in Los Angeles, a number of them said buying health insurance just doesn’t make economic sense. “A lot of people can’t afford it the way it is these days,” one young man said. “I think a lot of young men my age nowadays probably don’t really look into it,” said another.
Despite the governments plans to start fining taxing people who don’t sign up for coverage by March 31st of next year, experts say the numbers simply don’t add up for many young people. Faced with numerous other expenses, many would rather spend any leftover cash on travel, entertainment or been than drop $100 to $200 a month on something they don’t think they’ll need. One 20-something observed, “I hate the fact that I’m going to have to pay the fine, but I’ll pay the fine.”
Economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former head of the Congressional Budget Office said, “Literally, if they do the arithmetic, 80-85 percent will just say no … pay the penalty and stay out of the Affordable Care Act. There’s a long tradition of the young invincibles not buying insurance. Those who did (previously) buy insurance in polling that we’ve looked at said that if their premiums went up as much as 30 percent, they’d drop it.”
For many, that is the case, since many had the minimal catastrophic-care type policies that the ACA banned. Now they are being asked to buy better, albeit more expensive, health care policies that they don’t feel they need in the first place. Holtz-Eakin says if the administration prices young people out of the market, taxpayers will have to kick in the difference. “If the age group doesn’t sign up at all then the so-called exchanges are filled with very high-cost patients and the government will have to subsidize them extensively,” he said. “We’ll end up with a government-run program for very sick people, something we’ve already had.”
