The argument has been the ACA depends on a number of the young to sign up for healthcare insurance on the PPACA or at least this is what S.E. Cupp believes and suggested on This Week with George Stephanopoulis.
“There’s two problems, one is the technological, sort of mechanics of this. Obamacare relies on Millennials, these young invincibles who have never bought health insurance in the past, to suddenly change their behavior and buy something they don’t think they need. And in some cases can’t afford. That mechanical issue remains to be seen and the web site rollout has affected that. But it also reads as an inability to speak their language. Donna, you might call an 800 number and sit on the phone for 20 minutes . . . Millennials are not used to that. They do not meet in person with Insurance agents . . . They need a website that works, tat gets them . . . ”
Howard Dean:
I would have to disagree with S.C. This has been written on by many, many people, so I am not just picking on her. It is not true that if young people do not sign up the program is not going to work. That is false and the reason it . . .
George Stephanopoulis delivered a supposed coup de grâce with his support of SE Cupp’s statement:
“Wait a minute the White House just said that they have to have about 1/3 of the people 2.7 million of the 7 million people have to be young people.”
and SE Cupp agrees:
“That is what it means.”
Howard Dean again steps into the fray to explain what the CBO actually meant with their 7 million statement:
No. That’s not true actually. Because the reason that is framed as being true is everybody assumes that you can’t do community rating without an individual mandate, and that’s not true. And I know that because I did it 20 years ago. We did most of the stuff that’s in Obamacare . .
In Vermont and we also have almost every child under 18 has had health insurance in our state for 20 years. And we’ve had community rating, really tough community rating where you couldn’t charge more than 20% above your base rate to anybody in the country, in the state. And you couldn’t discriminate anybody for pre-existing conditions. We’ve had this for 20 years.
The issue is to have a good mix and the numeric arrived from the CBO explaining what a mix might be to estimate the costs of the PPACA and not to establish a standard for success. To further explain the issue brought up by SE Cupp and challenged by Howard Dean, Kaiser News Explains:
One misconception about the 7 million number creeping into the conversation is that it is a target necessary to achieve a viable insurance pool with a good mix of healthier and sick people. The principle is right — the larger the number, the better the chances of spreading risk — but the CBO was calculating the number who might be covered in the first year to estimate federal spending, not to lay down a threshold for the program’s success.
Howard Dean Dismisses S.E. Cupp on the ACA and Millennials, Crooks and Liars