Young Adults Likely to Pay Big Share of Reform's Cost

Washington Post ^ | 9/15/2009 | Shailagh Murray

[Saije]

As health-care legislation advances through Congress, the young adults who were so vital to President Obama's election are emerging as a significant beneficiary of his top domestic priority, but they are also likely to play a major role in funding any reform.

In a campaign-style rally Thursday at the University of Maryland at College Park, Obama will aim to tap his richest vein of support -- voters younger than 30 -- to help sell his reform plan to a more skeptical general public. "We're at an important turning point in our push for real reform," read the e-mailed invitation, "and it's critical that we seize this moment."

A 2008 study by the Urban Institute found that more than 10 million young adults ages 19 to 26 lack health insurance coverage. For many of those people, health-care reform would offer the promise of relatively inexpensive individual policies, which do not exist in many states today.

The trade-off is that young people would no longer be permitted to bet on their good health: All the reform legislation before Congress would require individuals to buy at least minimal coverage....

Drafting young adults into any health-care reform package is crucial to paying for it. As low-cost additions to insurance pools, young adults would help dilute the expense of covering older, sicker people. Depending on how Congress requires insurers to price their policies, this group could even wind up paying disproportionately hefty premiums -- effectively subsidizing coverage for their parents.

[Saije]

I think I'm starting to get how this is supposed to work.

[lookout88]

they voted for him!!

[gidget7]

Oh goody! This gets out it will kill this issue big time! If not his Presidency. It might be the ONLY thing to wake up those young adults who fawned over zero.

[DB]

And yet the young Obama voter is too stupid to figure out what The One is doing to them. They already pay for people using social security and medicare through payroll taxes and their forced paying for “health insurance” is just another scheme to get more money out of them to pay for other peoples health care. And as usual all of it is just a big pyramid scheme depending on an ever growing base to feed the wants of the people higher in the pyramid hierarchy. As the base shrinks and the higher levels expand the demands become ever greater on the shrinking base until it is finally destroyed. Welcome to your future Obama voter...

And where in the constitution does the federal government have the authority to force anyone to purchase anything against their will?

[mylife]

Suck it up Obamabots!

[kabar]

Drafting young adults into any health-care reform package is crucial to paying for it. As low-cost additions to insurance pools, young adults would help dilute the expense of covering older, sicker people. Depending on how Congress requires insurers to price their policies, this group could even wind up paying disproportionately hefty premiums -- effectively subsidizing coverage for their parents.

That's just for starters. In 1950 there were 16 workers for every retiree, today there are 3.3 and by 2030 there will be just two. And by 2030, one in five Americans will be 65 or older or twice what is now.

So kiddies, you will be taxed to death to fund the entitlement programs and the crushing national debt. For the first time the next generation will see a decline in the standard of living. America is in decline and Obama is just hastening the process. We will pay the price for living beyond our means. There are consequences to being the world's largest debtor nation.

[kabar]

Suck it up kids, regardless of political persuasion. You are stuck with the bill.

[goldstategop]

Yep. I won't have to pay the bill. Future generations will and Obamacare represents the most massive transfer of wealth from the young to the old in our nation's history. That's why it needs to be killed.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus

[databoss]

"that's right Johnny, and what do we have for those lucky contestants behind door number 3?? Why look, it's higher taxes, higher unemployment, higher energy costs and a lifetime of enslavement to the bureaucrats and organized labor!! Spell gulag and win a bonus prize!"