Hollywood’s elite has discovered that ObamaCare is no longer a really cool campaign promise. It is reality — thanks to the stunningly ill advised, contorted logic of Chief Justice John Roberts. And guess what? ObamaCare is a reality for the president’s friends in Hollywood, too. John Hayward writes about the movie industry’s “uh-oh” reaction to the impact of ObamaCare on their businesses.
Meantime, the administration is ramping up its marketing effort for ObamaCare. A key target is young, healthy people, who make up a huge piece of the uninsured population.
JLF’s Katherine Restrepo talked about this last week:
The administration is desperate for young, healthy individuals to obtain health coverage. If these individuals refuse to do so, they must pay a penalty in the form of a tax. The penalty, however, comes at a much lower cost than otherwise purchasing health coverage. More and more young “invincibles” don’t see the point in signing up for coverage until they get sick anyways, since the law now prohibits health insurers from discriminating against consumers with pre-existing conditions.
The invincibles that refuse to purchase health insurance via the exchanges defeats Obamacare’s intent of offering health plans at lower premiums to the older, sicker population. This is because the young and healthy act as the “anchor” that brings down premiums for sicker patients. They will be paying higher premiums than before to subsidize costlier consumers. As it is most likely that this subpopulation will say “no” to signing up for coverage, a majority of older, sicker patients will be left on the exchange and will have to pay much higher premiums than anticipated.
