15 Aug 2013 Investor’s Business Daily Touts National Center Study on ObamaCare and “Young Invincibles”
Obamacare is Likely to Come Up Short of the 2.7 Million Young People Needed to Make the Exchanges Function
Washington, D.C. – Investor’s Business Daily published an article today on the findings of the National Center for Public Policy Research’s new study, “Why the ‘Young Invincibles’ Won’t Participate in the ObamaCare Exchanges and Why It Matters.”
“Nearly 4 million young people will be much better off financially if they refuse to buy an ObamaCare insurance policy and instead pay the fine for going without coverage next year, according to a study released Thursday by the National Center for Public Policy Research,” writes senior IBD writer John Merline. “These findings are troubling because they point to what could be a fatal flaw of ObamaCare if the administration can’t convince enough of these ‘young invincibles’ to buy coverage.”
As study author David Hogberg notes in the study, over 3.7 million childless single people age 18-34 will be at least $500 better off if they don’t buy insurance on the exchange and instead pay the fine. Of those, about 3 million will be at least $1,000 better off if they go the same route.
“As a result, ObamaCare is likely to come up well short of the 2.7 million young people the administration figured it would need to sign up in the exchanges next year in order to make them work, the study concluded,” Merline states. “The result is that the young and healthy drop out, and the insurance pool becomes increasingly older, sicker and more expensive to cover.”
Hogberg concludes this phenomenon, known as an insurance “death spiral,” will cause premiums to rise precipitously and insurers to drop out of the exchanges. The crafters of ObamaCare tried to avoid this with a combination of a fine for not purchasing coverage and subsidies to help with the cost of insurance, but as the National Center study shows, neither of those will be sufficient to eliminate the considerable financial incentive the “young invincibles” will have to avoid the ObamaCare exchanges.
A press release summarizing the study, released August 15, is available here.
David Hogberg, Ph.D., is a health care policy analyst for the National Center for Public Policy Research. Previously, Dr. Hogberg was a Washington Correspondent for Investor’s Business Daily, specializing in health care and Medicare. Prior to his employment at IBD, he worked as a policy analyst studying health care and other issues for various think-tanks, including the National Center for Public Policy Research, and for the office of Representative Jeff Fortenberry. Dr. Hogberg holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Iowa. He is currently working on a book entitled “Medicare’s Victims: How The U.S. Government’s Largest Health Care System Harms Patients And Impairs Physicians.”
The National Center for Public Policy Research, founded in 1982, is a non-partisan, free-market, independent conservative think-tank. Ninety-four percent of its support comes from individuals, less than 4 percent from foundations, and less than 2 percent from corporations. It receives over 350,000 individual contributions a year from over 96,000 active recent contributors.
Contributions to The National Center are tax-deductible and greatly appreciated.
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