The Obama Administration has expended a great deal of energy encouraging young people to sign up for Obamacare, which relies heavily on the participation of healthier young Americans to offset healthcare costs for older, sicker enrollees. The importance of young Americans to Obamacare’s success would seemingly indicate that the Administration is closely following enrollment numbers for that group — but the White House says it is not.
Asked by a reporter on Tuesday about Obamacare enrollment numbers for young Americans, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that the Administration did not have “any data specifically broken down by age.” Carney then used his infamous “I would refer you” line to suggest that the reporter check with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. But the Press Secretary warned that CMS may not have the numbers either.
Carney went on to claim that the numbers for youth enrollment in Obamacare are expected to remain low until the last minute because young Americans planning to enroll will “wait until the last minute to get their paperwork done or their online applications done.”
Here’s a transcript of the conversation:
Q: Yeah, thank you. Do you have any update on all — at all for how successful the effort to find — get people to enroll — healthcare.gov has been on getting young people? What’s the status on that?CARNEY: I don’t have any data specifically broken down by age. I would refer you to CMS. I’m not sure what they have. There’s no question that overall between now and March 31st, there needs to be a good mix of individuals in — who enroll in the marketplaces. As I think we’ve talked about in general, it is common, as we’ve seen from past experience, for enrollment of any kind in these kind of programs, including the private health insurance that most of you enroll in and have open enrollment periods for, to happen disproportionately towards the end and that young people are even more inclined to wait until the last minute to get their paperwork done or their online applications done. So having stated those facts, I don’t have any specific information with regards to the age breakdown so far.Q: CMS won’t give that information out either. I mean, do you not have it? You must have it, right?CARNEY: I would — I just — I don’t have it. So I would refer you to CMS. I don’t have that data.
It is hard to believe that the White House would be unaware of the number of young Americans enrolling in Obamacre due to the importance of that demographic to the law’s success. More likely, the White House has seen the numbers — and the numbers add up to bad news for Obama’s healthcare overhaul.
Despite the Administration’s efforts and big spending on hip, youthful pathetic Obamacare advertisement campaigns designed to make young Americans feel like getting health insurance is cool, polling in recent months indicates that the demographic mostly feels that the government insurance program takes advantage of them.
A Harvard study released earlier this month revealed:
A mere 17 percent of millennials believe the quality of their health care will improve under the law, with 44 percent responding that it will get worse and 36 percent expecting that it will stay the same. The bleakest millennial opinions are on health care cost. Only 10 percent believe that the ACA will decrease their health care costs, with 50 percent saying it will increase their costs and 36 percent expecting their costs to stay the same. These responses are especially interesting given that only 12 percent of millennials have an individual health insurance plan, while 35 percent are on a parental health insurance plan, and 27 percent have an employer-provided health insurance plan. Twenty-two percent of millennials do not have health insurance.
If Harvard’s numbers correlate to real-life youth enrollment in the President’s healthcare plan, it’s no surprise that Carney doesn’t want to discuss the numbers. Making them public would likely renew calls to scrap the healthcare law altogether instead of waiting for its ultimate
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