Obama To Young People: Grab Your Ankles

Know your audience.  That's what they tell you in the media consulting business.  Today, my audience is young adults, so y'all get a lecture (which you hate) and graphics (which you love).  But fear not, it's all for the cause, which is to explain how the guy that you entrusted with 65% of your votes enacted health care legislation that puts so much of the burden for financing it on your shoulders.

Disclaimer: I am 59 years old.  I am in the absolute sweet spot as far as taking advantage of Obamacare's perks.  I can't do it.  If I did I'd never be able to look another young person in the eye, ever.

First off, it's important to understand that Obamacare affects everybody, whether you have insurance or not.  Revelations of the past two weeks show that virtually ALL private insurance plans in effect - employer subsidized or individual - are not compliant with Obamacare mandates, which means that they will all change radically by this time next year.  So, if you as a young person don't have insurance, you're going to be forced into Obamacare.  If you do have insurance, the rates you pay are going through the roof in order to become compliant with Obamacare.

Now, on to the figures.  The chart below shows insurance plan options lifted straight from the healthcare.gov website for a Single Person.  Being something of a spreadsheet geek, I filtered them down to show you the Bronze Plan, which is low premium/high OOP (Out Of Pocket), and the Platinum Plan, which is high premium/low OOP.  For good measure I threw in a Bronze Plan with a taxpayer subsidy of 35% on premiums based on a $40,000 yearly income.  This is the result:

The first thing that catches one's eye are the rates.  Overall, they are around 40% more expensive across all age groups than private insurance, and double or triple the rates available to young people.  See, unlike the federal government, the private insurance industry actually takes your age and good health into account and bases their premiums on that reality. 

The second thing you notice is the OOP (Out of pocket) levels.  OOP is the amount of money you spend before the insurance company has to kick in a dime.  OOP under Obamacare is insanely high for all age groups compared to private insurance plans.  What that means for young people is that absent a catastrophe, they will essentially end up paying all of their health care expenses and thus never benefit from the policy.

The third thing you notice is that OOP for youngsters is essentially the same as it is for older folks.  How is that fair?  Simple: it's not.  $6000 for the 27 year old, who has very little if any yearly expenditures for health care, and $6000 for me, who has a lot.  This is one method by which Obamacare essentially dumps the bulk of health care spending on the young, but by no means the only one.

But wait, you say, don't the premium subsidies help the young afford a more robust plan like a Silver, Gold or Platinum that is not so front-loaded with OOP?  The Obamites would have you believe so, and would point to the premium subsidies as an inducement to step up to a more comprehensive policy.  As it turns out, premium subsidies don't do a damn thing for the vast majority of working young people.  Using the calculator available on the Kaiser Family Foundation website, a Single Person earning $40K yearly income gets 35% off on premiums, which is a piddling savings regardless.  Grow your income beyond that - which is exactly what will happen for young folks - and the subsidy quickly dwindles to zero.  Older people, by comparison, routinely see their incomes level off or drop as they approach retirement, so the premium subsidies for them actually grow. 

The next thing to draw one's attention are the things that are not included in the policies, including Dental care and Optical care.  Dental care has a separate calculator that screws young people every bit as much as the health care plans do.  Optical is not available to calculate anywhere on the website.  Also not included are the premium upcharge if you are a Smoker.  Finally, the healthcare.gov website claims time and again that the figures they quote you are only estimates: you're just not going to know for sure what you will pay until you completely enroll on the website and commit to a plan.

Also on the list of information not included on the website is any meaningful detail as to what the plans cover, particularly whether your preferred doctors, specialists, hospitals and clinics are accessible via the plan you've chosen.  And for the most part, doctor participation is something you're unlikely to be able to discern until after you've contracted for a policy and then gone out and researched it yourself.

Of the laundry list of things not included for your scrutiny, the last "Gotcha" for young people is the most interesting: OOP subsidies.  Like Optical and coverage for Smokers, healthcare.gov won't let you see what you're entitled to on OOP subsidies until after you submit all your personal information and subscribe to a plan.  There are two reasons the Obamites are doing this:

1) The subsidy structure for OOPs - just like everything else in the plan - is engineered as a gigantic wealth transfer mechanism from people who are working to those who are not.  That means young people in particular get the shaft, given that they are largely Single and at the beginning of their work life.  And, if the Obamites structured OOP subsidies similar to premium subsidies - which is likely - this would mean that young people would get no relief on precisely the element of Obamacare that is most punitive: Out of Pocket expenses.

2) The other very sneaky and underhanded reason Obamacare goes to such lengths to force everybody to enroll is that the entire plan is unenforceable unless everybody - particularly young people - enroll.  If you don't enroll, the IRS has absolutely no means to come after you for the Individual Mandate.  This is true because they have no means of knowing whether or not you have already enrolled for insurance outside of the healthcare.gov website.

Finally, we come to the Individual Mandate.  Don't believe the crap you hear that this is only $95 per year.  The law clearly states that it is $95 per person or a percentage of gross income, whichever is greater.  That starts out at 1% of yearly income, and will grow to 2.5% by 2016.   That's $1,000 plucked from the wallet of somebody struggling by on a $40k salary every year, and in return, you get: nothing. 

So in conclusion, let us review the sundry ways that Obamacare is bad for the health of America's young folks:

- It offers insurance policies to young people double or triple the cost of those available on the open market.

- It will invalidate ALL employer subsidized insurance plans, since none of them are compliant with Obamacare.  This will cause employee premiums and OOP to skyrocket. 

- With the exception of a catastrophic illness, young adults end up paying all of their own health care costs while still being forced to pay for a policy.

And last but not least, since the entire program is destined to crash and burn due to the berserk overspending, corruption and waste that is inevitable, young adults will be forced to pick up that tab as well, just as we are all now paying for Social Security and Medicare; or, your children will. 

Bottom line, stay the hell away from healthcare.gov.