The latest Bloomberg Businessweek discusses one of the major challenges associated with Obamacare: the need to convince millions of young Americans — “young invincibles” — to act against their own interests and buy health insurance that’s costlier than necessary.
Steven Binko is young. He’s healthy. So he doesn’t see any reason he should be required to have health insurance. “I’m not in a position to afford any insurance at all,” says the 25-year-old Los Angeles resident who is unemployed. He has coverage through his stepmother’s plan, but he’ll be forced off it when he turns 26 in February. After that, he’ll just do without. “For young people just learning to take care of themselves, it’s foolish we have to take care of our older generation,” he says.
Young invincibles, which is what the insurance industry calls people like Binko, are at the center of a pitched battle between backers of the Affordable Care Act and its opponents. There are an estimated 15.7 million Americans age 19 to 29 who lack insurance, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based foundation that works to expand access to health care. The White House has said it needs 2.7 million young adults to buy insurance through the government-run marketplaces that open on Oct. 1. Without this group, premiums for seniors with costlier health problems will rise, and the health-care reform may falter.
The conflict is playing out on television and the Internet, on college campuses, and in door-to-door campaigns waged by volunteers across the U.S. FreedomWorks, a group with ties to the Tea Party, is urging young adults to burn their “Obamacare draft cards” by skipping the exchanges. Americans for Prosperity, a conservative group backed by the Koch brothers that pushes for limited government, in July announced a $1 million ad campaign aimed at women and people under 35. “Obamacare is an awful deal for young people,” says Evan Feinberg, president of Generation Opportunity, an Arlington (Va.)-based advocacy group for 18- to 29-year-olds that supports less government. “We’re talking about stealing from young people during our leanest years. We don’t have the money to be footing the bill for older generations’ health care.”
