Sometimes dictators miscalculate.
Consider the following:
More than half of those 18 to 29 years old say they disapprove of Obamacare and half expect it will increase their health-care costs, a survey by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics shows. Four in 10 say they anticipate the quality of their coverage will get worse because of the law.
In a finding perhaps even more troubling for the White House, almost half in that age group, the so-called millennials, say they’re unlikely to enroll in insurance through a government exchange, even if eligible. That could put at risk the economics of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which needs young, healthy people to enroll in large numbers to offset the costs of caring for older, sicker Americans. [Source: Bloomberg.com 12/4/13]
In order to gain and retain power in an entitlement state democracy, a politician like Obama relies on large numbers of people desiring something for nothing.
“You want health care, for free and as a right? You’ve got it,” promised Obama. He won twice on this promise.
Now the bill comes due.
If you’re a young person, you’re learning that in order to ensure that everyone has “free” health care forever, somebody will have to pay for it.
Under the Obamacare law, those who don’t have (or necessarily even need) health insurance are now required by law to purchase it.
Socialized medicine cannot work unless somebody pays for it. In theory, everybody must pay for it.
That’s one of the many deceptions of socialism: In order to get something for nothing, you’re going to have to pay for it.
Even if you pay nothing in taxes, you pay for it in other ways. Business and the hated rich people who get hit with higher tax rates pass those costs along in higher costs for products or services. These higher costs—in gasoline, computer products, cell phones—hit young people particularly hard.
Any patient in a doctor’s office or hospital–and this will include some young people–will learn the difference between a health care provider motivated by professional pride and self-interest as opposed to motivation by government directive. If you thought HMOs and insurance companies engaged in bean counting, wait until the national health care board in Washington DC starts making medical decisions based on statistics and political considerations.
Fortunately for politicians like Obama, voters (especially younger ones) don’t tend to blame these higher costs and life disruptions on the politicians who create them. They blame those charging the higher costs: The wealthy, the business owners, the doctors, the insurance companies, the “mean and evil rich people” who, according to politicians like Obama, are responsible for all that’s wrong with the world.
But Obamacare makes it harder for Obama and his ilk to hide behind the excuse of the “evil rich” and for-profit business. Obamacare requires young people to purchase insurance they might not need or want. They might not even wish to make the time to go online and struggle endlessly with the healthcare.gov website that doesn’t work.
Ask the parents of any eighteen or twenty-two-year old how easy it is to make a young person do something he or she does not wish to do. By what stretch of reasoning did Obama expect young people to listen to him, merely because he’s telling them to buy insurance?
Young individuals differ in economic status, productive capacity and levels of work ethic just as older individuals do. How long can young people who work harder and make more money be counted on to pay for the health care of their slacking peers who might decide to go with the freebie [Medicaid] plans instead?
Obama didn’t take any of this into account, apparently. He just sneered his way into office twice, counting in large measure on the support of young people never to question or challenge him, in any way.
Now what’s he going to do?