The Department of Health and Human services announced Wednesdays the enrollment figures for Obamacare and they are far from boast-worthy.
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Just 26,000 Americans were able to finalize and actually purchase a health plan through the unusable HealthCare.gov website.
The number is far behind where the government would like to see enrollment levels to assure that the Affordable Care Act does in fact make health insurance more affordable.
On top of that, the government did not release the demographics of the enrollees, which leaves one to wonder if enough young people are signing up for the plans, like the Obama administration had hoped.
“Obamacare’s success depends on millions of young people paying three times more for insurance so older people can pay slightly less,” Evan Feinberg, president of the youth activist group Generation Opportunity, said in a statement.
“These numbers reflect what Generation Opportunity has been saying for months: young people know a bad deal when they see one,” he added.
Generation Opportunity launched a very visible ad campaign encouraging young people to “opt out” of buying Obamacare, encouraging young people to know their options when it comes to health insurance.
(Read Related: “Opt Out” ad is probably the creepiest thing ever)
The ads have rallied large criticism, most recently for a tailgate party they threw at a Virginia Tech v. University of Miami football game that included corn hole, beer pong and a local DJ. But could they possibly be having an impact?
Learn about your healthcare options today @univmiami. You can #optout! @rac561 @rmsCubanita @elenatayem @gusdelafe pic.twitter.com/zpJNklfegZ
— GenOpp (@GenOpp) November 9, 2013
“It’s a generational game rigged against us, and we’re not interested in playing,” Feinberg said of Obamacare.
Obamacare is redistribution, much like liberal progressives aimed. But rather than transferring wealth from the rich to the poor, the law forces young healthy people to pay into a system that will be mostly used by the elderly.
Business Insider’s Josh Barro notes that this is exactly what’s supposed to happen. “[Obamacare] is designed to be a fiscal transfer from the young to the old, the healthy to the sick, and the rich to the poor,” he writes.
What makes Obamacare’s redistribution look odd, even “shocking,” is that the law was structured to move much of the redistribution off the government’s books. To reduce the need for direct, tax-financed subsidies, the law regulates the insurance market to ensure that it will have cross-subsidy: premiums for people who are older and sicker are held artificially low, while premiums for the young and healthy are inflated. Then other rules (including employer and individual mandates) aim to ensure that young, healthy people buy insurance despite the inflated the price.
So, instead of hiding the transfer from the young and healthy as part of a tax bill that finances the whole government, Obamacare causes it to show up in the form of a higher insurance “premium.
Recently Colorado rolled out its sales pitch to younger, potential enrollees that not only miss the mark, but reads more like an embarrassing Internet meme than a legitimate sales advertisement. It is unlikely that even this base attempt to sell keg stands and free birth control are enough to rally the necessary millions of young Americans needed to sustain the “affordable” government run health exchange.
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