Nick Gillespie of Reason.com explains for TIME magazine readers why Obamacare represents an assault on younger Americans.

Is massive stupidity covered under Obamacare? What about sexual promiscuity and heavy drinking? Those are some of the questions raised by a controversial ad campaign that aims to encourage younger Americans to sign up for health-insurance plans created by the Affordable Care Act.

But there’s a deeper issue that the new “Got Insurance?” campaign ignores completely: Why should young and relatively poor people be forced to sign up for insurance that charges them above-market rates to subsidize rates for old and relatively wealthy people?

In this sense, Obamacare is simply the latest instance of generational theft being perpetrated against younger Americans. It’s a feature and not a bug of the President’s signature health care law that insurance premiums for those under 30 are likely to increase significantly to allow premiums for older Americans to fall. Indeed, the whole plan hinges on getting 2.7 million whippersnappers out of a total of 7 million enrollees to sign up in the individual market during the first year. If too many older and sicker folks flood the market, the system will crash even faster than the HealthCare.gov website. …

… There’s no reason to believe that even the greatest ad campaign in the world will jack up the youth numbers to where they need to be. Yes, young people foolishly believe themselves to be indestructible. But the actuarial truth is that most of them won’t ever need the sort of wide-ranging benefits mandated by Obamacare.

And given Obamacare’s ban on excluding people with pre-existing conditions and the relatively small financial penalties for not having insurance, the smart move for many people–whether young or old–is to wait until you actually need health care before shelling out for monthly premiums.

Younger Americans may indeed be reckless enough to do keg stands and have unprotected sex on a regular basis, but they’re not so dumb as the “Got Insurance?” ads–or the architects of Obamacare–seem to think.