Given the sort of adventures and experiences that fill my life, I generally find myself feeling very young or not remotely young at all. One of the hazards of either being around much older or much younger people is that treating others as peers can be fraught with all kinds of dangers and concerns, not only for myself but also from others. Today, though, I read an article [1] dealing with Portland and health insurance that considered me the sort of young person whose decisions would help determine the success of Obamacare for the general public. Let us phrase this bluntly, if the healthcare of the Republic depends on the decisions made by me and by people like me, we are in a really sorry state, no joke.

One of the problems I have with the health care reforms is that insurance companies are no longer legally allowed to charge higher costs for people with higher risks. While it is understandable that those with chronic health conditions would not want to be penalized for such matters, such pooling made it possible to increase the size of the insurance pool by offering very low prices to healthy people. Now that unhealthy people have basically demanded to be subsidized for their insurance, it means that the bill has to be picked up by those who are healthier. Given that older people tend to have more health problems, that means that the bill has to be foot by younger people, many of whom are either unwilling or unable to pay a higher price than is merited by their own health.

What makes this even more difficult of a matter is that only very low income people have their health insurance subsidized by the new health care laws. For those people who make less than about $26,000 a year, insurance at a low cost is not too difficult to obtain, which might make such people more likely to go without a trip to the movies or a restaurant once a month in order to have health insurance, which is not a bad trade. On the other hand, those that make more than that could be faced with having to pay $150 or more a month on their own for insurance, which makes paying a penalty of $150 for the entire year for not having insurance to seem like a reasonable tradeoff for some people, even if it does mean that the rates for older people will go up commensurately. Speaking for myself, I have not had health insurance since 2009 because of the absolute disaster of my own economic life since that period and the sort of labor that has been available, not that I’m happy about such matters (I had to pay for treatment for a gout attack out of pocket while making very little money, which was not enjoyable).

At stake is whether a younger generation of Americans that has been greatly harmed by recent economic conditions is willing or able to suffer for the benefit of the larger population. As is the case with most entitlement reforms, the major beneficiaries of the Obamacare are middle-aged Baby Boomers who are nearing retirement, and the corresponding losers are those younger adults who are being asked to foot the bill even as their own opportunities for ever seeing any benefits from current or past entitlement programs become ever more greatly endangered by our society’s growing indebtedness and the shrinking opportunities seen by many young people. Given a greater burden to shoulder for the greater good, along with lesser opportunities to see that good directed at themselves, it seems quite possible that many young people will simply refuse to suffer for the benefit of those who have not really acted in our best interests through the policies and politics they have supported. How to sweeten the pot, so to speak, to make it less inequitable of a burden, is a matter that appears to be beyond the capacity for statecraft in our corrupt times.

What is likely to be done? At this stage, it seems unreasonable that a young and reasonably healthy person would be willing to pay nearly $2000 a year for bare-bones insurance that offers basically no coverage when they can pay a penalty of about $150 a year for not having any at all. Provided there is any free market incentive left in our health care insurance world, it remains to be seen if employers (and the government) can set up a playing field that makes it pay for young people to do their part in helping to ensure prices stay reasonable in health care for anyone else. After all, if those who are young and healthy are not willing or able to foot the bill for those who are not, then prices will rise for everyone else. Perhaps it would be better to start thinking of ways to make matters more appealing for those who are being asked to sacrifice for the ease and comfort of others, given that self-sacrifice does not appear to be the spirit of our times as a general rule.

[1] http://finance.yahoo.com/news/health-care-laws-success-rests-040100677.html