Now we know that about one million young adults up to age 26 were added to those Americans with health insurance as a result of the Affordable Care Act. These may be married, employed and not dependent on their parents, it doesn’t matter.
No doubt supporters of this legislation will see it as a success and if you measure expansion of coverage in one dimension perhaps it is successful. However, most of these individuals could have obtained coverage long before the legislation was enacted, but either it was not affordable or they chose not to spend their money on health insurance.
So what changed? What changed is that employers who must now accept this liability are paying more for health benefits as are other employees who share in the group premiums.
The idea of claiming success by looking at only one dimension of a problem seems epidemic these days. Ask the people who used home equity to live a “successful” lifestyle about that or perhaps the people in foreclosure because owning a house did not mean being able to afford a house.
Health care reform is based on many such one-dimensional success assumptions. It is only a matter of time until more and more become apparent as they are today with both Social Security and Medicare.
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