Kids, Buying into ObamaCare Will Cost You
A wave of resistance to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - a.k.a., "ObamaCare" - is exploding across America. Companies like Trader Joes realized the law's impact and can no longer afford to sponsor health care for their part-time workers. Unions want to be just like Hill staffers, as far away from ObamaCare as possible for fear of hour cutbacks. And 88 percent of America's families do not believe they will be better off with the health care mandate. Ironically, the only ones in America who still support ObamaCare is the group it hurts the most: young Americans.
All too soon, young adults between the ages 18 and 34 will learn the hard lesson that there are no free rides, especially when it comes to government welfare programs.
It's easy to understand why most Americans fear ObamaCare. President Obama promised that his signature legislation would lower health care costs. Who wouldn't love that? In reality, though, the law raises insurance premiums by $900 per year, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And at a time when families are living on tight budgets, the law aims to increase coverage by imposing 21 new or higher taxes. These "hidden" fees make no sense to a nation suffocating under an increasing debt crisis.
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What's really infuriating is the Obama Administration is adding $684 million annually to the debt by launching a celebrity-ridden advertisement campaign to encourage young Americans to participate and buy into ObamaCare, according to the Associated Press. Lest you be misled, it's not because this administration cares about uninsured youth; it's because they desperately need to convince 2.7 million young healthy people to pay three times the cost of health care in order to offset the cost of 25 million new high-risk individuals.
Professionally, young adults already feel the ramifications of ObamaCare. For example, it is probably a relief for the 23-year-old graduate student to remain on his parents' health insurance until age 26. But this benefit isn't free. Companies are assuming these costs, which cut into their overall budgets, which result in less new hires - thus making it harder for graduates to land jobs. According to a 2012 Pew Research report, 82 percent of surveyed Americans say finding a job is harder for young adults today than it was for their parents' generation, while Generation Opportunity's latest Millennial Jobs Report found that 1.7 million 18- to 29-year-olds have given up looking for work.
The government should not be making your health care decisions. Neither should it create a national "Data Hub," where traditionally confidential medical records are exposed to the government.
Nor should this mandatory socialized medicine program force you to pay for questionable health care services. "Essential Benefits" are the most controversial component of ObamaCare, because they force insurance companies to provide a broad range of health care service, ten categories in every plan. We already know that HHS mandated coverage for birth control and abortion-inducing drugs like Ella and Plan B. However, the specifics of these services, including substance abuse, behavior therapy, mental health, and rehabilitative services are not clearly defined. These benefits are so vague that it leaves the door open for easy misuse and abuse by special interest groups. For example, what does "behavior therapy" encompass? Will taxpayers be expected to pay for gender reassignment therapy or sex-change operations? What if you and your entire family are health conscience, teetotaling, Baptists who never touch alcohol or drugs? Should you be forced to buy a plan that doesn't reward your abstinence with a lower premium rate? Some of these terms sound harmless, but the Obama Administration has intentionally left them entirely undefined, hoping that each state will be lobbied into including morally questionable services.
The bottom line is that ObamaCare is going to cost. Not at some indefinite date either. It's going to cost every young person thousands of dollars, job security, free market enterprise, privacy, and moral conscience rights, starting now and cumulating on January, 1, 2014.
Young Americans everywhere should stand up and say, "We're not buying it." That's why Concerned Women for America this week launched our #notbuyingit campaign to educate young people across the nation. As women, and as Americans, we know how to shop in a free-market system, and we can spot a bad deal when we see it. ObamaCare is a bad deal, and we're simply not buying it.
