The big push over the two week ObamaCare enrollment extension is to improve significantly the number of young healthy individuals enrolled for qualified healthcare plans on the state and federal healthcare exchanges. The target that HHS has claimed is needed to bring a balance to the system is 38-39% of those between the ages of 19-34. This age group pays significantly more for healthcare they do not typically use is transferred over to the elderly and less healthy who pay less. At the 6 million enrollment mark the makeup of 19-34 year olds was said to be between 25-26%, a far cry from the 38-39% needed to bring stability to the risk pool. And so, there is a huge, last minute push by the Obama Administration to boost this number up significantly. Enrollment has been robust the last two weeks of March. Of course the administration claims that this is due to the popularity of ObamaCare leaving out the fact that having healthcare insurance is now MANDATED BY LAW and the high enrollment are those who have simply put off compliance to the law until the last minute. But regardless of reason, the administration hopes that by extending the deadline the wave of enrollment will continue possibly right up to the 7 million mark and boost the enrollment number of the much needed young invincibles. It’s pretty optimistic on the part of the Obama Administration to think that they can get the ratio of young to old even close to what is needed to bring stability to the risk pool this late in the game. On the assumption that enrollment does reach the 7 million mark, if half of the added enrollees were of the young and healthy group they still make up only 30% of those enrolled. If they were three quarters of those enrolled it bumps up to 33.8% and if every single one of the added 1 million enrollments were made up of the young invincibles then they would still be just a hair shy of their goal. But the likelihood of enrolling another million people on the exchanges over the next 2 weeks is highly unlikely and the chances of even half of them being the young and healthy group is all but a statistical impossibility. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ObamaCare is fiscally devastating to families and the nation’s economy and it is only going to get worse. We must never lose sight of the fact that ObamaCare is a national healthcare insurance subsidy, not healthcare reform. Our options are to learn to live with its significant flaws and astronomical costs or repeal the law for being the federalized disaster that it is. Because of its complexity and one size fits all design, ObamaCare is simply unfixable.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 12:35:19 +0000
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