Pretend for a moment that the online health care exchanges were working flawlessly — that prospective enrollees in Obamacare were able not only get into the system but navigate through it in a painless and timely fashion. To imagine such a thing you’d have to be really good at make-believe since Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admitted yesterday that the “glitches” were anticipated.
She acknowledged that the online insurance marketplace, which needed five years of construction and a year of testing, “had two years and almost no testing.”
But even if the website were error-free, the law as designed would still be a lousy deal for the young, healthy Americans whose participation the administration is banking on to offset the costs to the program of insuring older, sicker Americans.
The Washington Examiner cites a new study by the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis that finds that young people in 45 states will see their health insurance premiums rise under the Affordable Care Act.
Virginia leads the pack, as individuals aged 27 and under will see their health insurance premiums jump by 252.5 percent — $416.55….
Virginians under the age of 50 will see their premiums jump by an even greater percentage, rising from $228 to $991.03.
Joel Gehrke, the article’s author, notes that, like the software glitches, these increases come as no surprise to the law’s planners. He quotes Henry Aaron, vice chairman of the D.C. health exchange, as stating, “I have always said when looking at this bill, that if I were a young person, I can see elements of this bill that I wouldn’t like in the short run.”
It’s hard to argue that 45 out of 50 ain’t bad. Nevertheless, according to the study’s author, Drew Gonshorowski, young residents of Colorado, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, and Rhode Island can expect their monthly premiums to decline, but that’s because “those states had already over-regulated insurance markets that led to sharply higher premiums through adverse selection.”
