By Robert Laurie ——Bio and Archives--January 14, 2014
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People signing up for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act's federal and state marketplaces tend to be older and potentially less healthy, officials said Monday, a demographic mix that could threaten the law's economic underpinnings and cause premiums to rise in the future if the pattern persists. Of those who signed up in the first three months, administration officials said, 55 percent are age 45 to 64. Only 24 percent of those choosing a health insurance plan are 18 to 34, a group that is usually healthier and needs fewer costly medical services. People 55 to 64 — the range just below the age at which people qualify for Medicare — represented the largest group, at 33 percent.How bad is this? Well, as Phil Klein points out at the Washington Examiner, it's 1% below what most people considered to be the worst case scenario.
In December, a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation identified a “worst-case scenario” situation in which just 25 percent of enrollees were in the 18-to-34 demographic.Klein also notes that lefties in - and out - of the administration are claiming that young people will sign up later. They're a bunch of slackers, you know, and they wait until the last possible second to do everything. That's especially true when the thing in question is unpleasant, unwanted, and painfully expensive. Everything will be fine - if a full 50% of the people who enroll between now and March 31st are between 18 and 34 years of age.
Though there's a plausible case to be made that younger Americans will wait until later to sign up, the administration is still in a deep hole. Because the current number of young adult signups is significantly less than 40 percent, to make up ground, signups in the coming months will have to be significantly higher than 40 percent. As an example, let's just say all of the roughly 2.2 million Americans whom HHS says have signed up for insurance pay their premiums and complete enrollment, and the total paid enrollment number through March ends up being 5 million people. To meet the original demographic goal, about 1.4 million of the remaining 2.8 million enrollees — or roughly half — would have to be between the ages of 18 and 34.Uh-huh. Good luck withthat. Remember: As per their usual M.O., the White House is refusing to release data on how many people have completed the sign-up process by paying their first month's premium. The 24% figure only represents people who have "selected a plan" through ObamaCare. We have no way of knowing how many of these people have actually purchased insurance. How much do you want to bet that 24% is actually inflated?
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