ObamaCare’s “Millennial mandate,” the requirement that employers who offer health coverage for employees’ dependents continue to offer such coverage until the dependents turn 26 years old, is one of those supposed free lunches.
This mandate’s benefits unquestionably come at a cost. Expanding health insurance coverage among adults age 19-26 leads them to consume more medical care. When those people file insurance claims, health-insurance premiums rise. Yet ObamaCare does an amazing job of hiding those costs from voters.
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Obamacare was a badly designed law. We could have achieved gains in insurance coverage without Obamacare’s regulation-heavy approach; we could have addressed the health-care system’s discrete problems without trying to overhaul it from Washington, D.C. Those without access to employer health plans could have been given enough money to buy a policy that protected them against catastrophic expenses — and that offered more protection if they put some of their own income into the policy.
More Americans think the law has hurt them than think it has helped them. And as flawed as the law already appears, worse days may be ahead for it.
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Americans have found that health-care expenses for many individuals and families are higher, their insurance costs are higher, their choice of doctors and insurance is diminished, and the total costs of the program are burdening a weak economy. Had members of Congress known then what they know now, they would never have passed Obamacare.
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Obama’s claim that the ACA has reduced the number of uninsured by 20 million, implies that state and local governments have $650 million in additional resources to spend on illegal immigrants, whether it be for health care, education or anything else. The ACA has increased the amount of resources dedicated to health care of illegal immigrants–the explicit legal prohibition against this notwithstanding.
This is just one of many reasons why Conover believes a nation of 320 million people is much better off letting such resource allocation decisions be made at the state and local level rather than by federal taxpayers. That way people can vote with their feet if they don’t like the idea of their tax dollars being used to pay for people who have come to this nation illegally.
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