WARNING: Millennial side effects of Obamacare

The gross cost projection of Obamacare — from budget years 2014 to 2023 — is approximately $1.8 trillion, according to a recent report from the Congressional Budget Office — a number nearly double the figure President Obama gave when lobbying Congress to approve the so-called Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. In light of some of the bill’s side effects, however, it would have been more aptly dubbed “Obama-doesn’t-care.”

The cornerstone selling point the president used to persuade Millennials to throw their weight behind him and an otherwise ridiculously pork-laden piece of legislation was the smoke-and-mirrors promise that those 26 and under could remain on their parents’ health-insurance plans — a promise that met some Millennials’ short-term medical needs but at the cost of deferring their long-term solvency.

Much like a credit-card offer with a 14-month, zero-percent, introductory-interest rate, President Obama played to the benefits of the present without emphasizing the damage of skyrocketing interest charges when the introductory rate expires and the credit card is maxed out.

Now Millennials’ solvency is in jeopardy as they face footing the bill for a health-insurance infrastructure full of elderly, more ailing “frequent flyers,” while deriving little to no benefit from their government-mandated “healthcare” apart from the security of knowing they won’t go bankrupt if they fall and break a leg.

President Obama exploited Millennials’ immediate needs to ensure political success, and Millennials — the voting bloc often attributed for President Obama’s consecutive electoral successes — are beginning to see the light.

According to a poll by Harvard’s Institute of Politics, only 25 percent of Millennials believe the country is headed in the right direction. The May jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates teen unemployment is a whopping 24.5 percent, while Generation Opportunity’s Millennial Jobs Report for March places the real unemployment rate for those ages 18-29 at a staggering 16.2 percent.

Millennials are also finding that companies, rather than paying heath-insurance benefits for full-time employees as mandated in Obamacare, are cutting down on the number of hours they give employees, opting for more part-time staff than full-time staff with benefits, as reported by The Fiscal Times. My younger brother — a summer lifeguard between semesters in college — and many of his friends, for example, are limited to 34 hours per week when they otherwise would’ve had the chance to earn a full 40 hours of pay — money they could have spent defraying the cost of their fall semester or paying for car insurance to commute to and from student-teaching assignments.

In his recent column titled “The mindset of the left: Part IV,” economist Thomas Sowell speaks of “busybody policies” that are “contracting [young people’s] options.” He recounts his days as a familyless 17-year-old living in Harlem searching for work, which he found — first as a part-time employee in a machine shop and then, on top of that, a full-time job delivering telegrams. The money he earned from the two jobs combined enabled him to eat relatively well and use public transportation — things that had been luxuries before his employment. “I could even put aside money for a rainy day. It was the closest thing to nirvana for me,” he says. Had he been burdened with the side effects of Obamacare, his take-home pay would have been even less.

More than anything, Millennials want jobs when they graduate college or when Dec. 31 of their twenty-sixth year rolls around and they have to scramble to find health insurance. They don’t want a quick fix to their short-term problems but jobs that pay well and fit the skills for which they are trained. Rather than spend billions of dollars abroad, President Obama had better quit being complacent about unemployment numbers and start implementing policies that will help the economy grow and flourish and consequently do the same for Millennials.

And, while a recent Pew Research Center poll found Millennials recognize the need for government, it’s important that statistic not be misconstrued for vaulting control but a need for government insofar that it preserves freedom rather than causes Millennials to merely dream about their dreams — maybe then, like Thomas Sowell, Millennials will be able to sock money away for a rainy day.