Why Only 24% Younger Signups In ObamaCare Might Be Worse Than You Think

According to Health and Human Services, the current health exchange pricing of monthly premiums is based on the assumption that 38% of those enrolled would be young and healthy individuals between the ages of 18 and 34.  Otherwise, the costs would necessarily jump because there won't be enough healthy people to offset the cost of covering the older and sicker of our population.

When the latest enrollment numbers were released, we learned that only 24% of the enrollees were in that critical younger healthier group; a near 40% shortfall.  Opponents of ObamaCare jumped on this because they know, logically, it means that the current ObamaCare premiums will have to be adjusted upwards by about a whopping 40% unless this situation is improved.

But, that 24% might be a lot worse than you think. What if that 24% isn't a healthy young group?  What if it is mostly made up of younger people or younger families with serious pre-existing conditions?  Right now, there are about 73.7 million Americans who are in that age group. According to Families USA,  at least 15.9% of those millions of Americans -- or about 12 million people -- have serious enough health conditions that they are either not insurable or prohibitively too costly to insure.  So, easily, the less than 1 million youth signups into ObamaCare thus far could have actually come out of that 12 million who are sicker.  If so, we're not just looking at a 40% increase.  In fact, the current exchange pricing could be actually doubled next year.


References:

ObamaCare Resorts To Gimmicks To Get Young To Sign On: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials-perspective/022514-691159-obamacare-needs-young-enrollees-but-isnt-getting-them.htm

Pre-Existing Conditions: A Problem that Grows with Age: http://www.familiesusa.org/resources/publications/reports/health-reform/pre-ex-conditions-findings.html

So How Many Millennials are there?: http://www.marketingcharts.com/wp/topics/demographics/so-how-many-millennials-are-there-in-the-us-anyway-30401/