4 ms·

Who will pay higher premiums under Obamacare? Young men - May. 14, 2013

16 points by tocomment 13y ago

hga 13y ago
An inevitable outcome of the switch to community rating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_rating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_rating
bti 13y ago
Ouch. I am in the process of starting my own business and plan to eventually be doing it full time. I am currently 24 so I'm guessing once I turn 26 I will need to buy my own insurance. Any freelancers/small-business owners have any advice on this once the ACA goes into effect?
nmcfarl 13y ago
This was inevitable. The group that pays the least, when it is folded into a larger more varied group, will pay more. There was no way this was not going to work this way. However - how many young men who are not insured by their employers, pick up medical insurance? I know I didn’t. I’d imagine this is just guys who've gotten married and had a kid AND who are on the upper end of the income bracket for the uninsured.
- ScottWhigham 13y ago
  However - how many young men who are not insured by their employers... Maybe that comment works on reddit or other sites but I think many if not most of us here at HN work for ourselves or for startups who likely aren't able to provide across-the-board healthcare coverage for all employees. Given that the 20s and 30s are "the years to have kids", this group would include almost all budding entrepreneurs who want to get started in their 20s and have a family while doing so.
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  > However - how many young men who are not insured by their employers, pick up medical insurance? Under the ACA, essentially all of them will be required to.
  - hga 13y ago
    Not quite. Many people are getting their work hours reduced to less than 30 a week, a part time status exempts employers from Obamacare mandates. From "food service" workers to higher education adjunct professors. Tax something and you'll get less of it. This most certainly includes "young" employment.
    - dragonwriter 13y ago
      > Not quite. Many people are getting their work hours reduced to less than 30 a week, a part time status exempts employers from Obamacare mandates. Irrelevant to the comment this was offered in response to, which discusses the individuals that will be required to get insurance, not the employers that will be required to provide it. Essentially all individuals will be obligated to purchase insurance (with a penalty/tax if they fail to do so); in some cases, employers will provide it (either by existing mandate, expanded mandate, or choice), but that's mostly beside the point. > Tax something and you'll get less of it. This most certainly includes "young" employment. Well, yes, that certainly is a fundamental problem with imposing special additional taxes on employment as opposed to other income as we do through payroll taxes which promotes (given equal efficiency before considering taxation) capital-heavy over labor-heavy methods of production and suppresses employment, but since PPACA doesn't contain special taxes on "young employment", I'm not sure how its germane to the immediate conversation.
  - nmcfarl 13y ago
    This is actually what I was trying to point out with that statement - but I clearly muddled it. The class who will see the biggest jump are probably not the young men who are insured and pay for insurance. But the young men who are uninsured and don't pay for insurance.
dclowd9901 13y ago
Is this really news? It's pretty well known that young men have the lowest health care costs of any demographic. In a system of distributed or shared cost, the community who costs the least to maintain will inevitably pay more for it. I'm ok with it, personally, because I have no right to my being just as no one does.
napoleond 13y ago
As others have said, this is inevitable. However, maybe the young men will appreciate it when they become old men.
- eavc 13y ago
  Or when their parents become ill. Or for purposes of society.
- hga 13y ago
  Or maybe these young men realize that the Federal government's unfunded liabilities exceeding 90 trillion dollars, prior to adding Obamacare, will not be redeemed, because they simply cannot be? Seriously, I don't know your age, but are you at all confident that Social Security and Medicare will be there for you all the way to when you might die of natural causes? I seem to remember that surveys say the "young" don't believe it; if they're young enough, they don't expect to see anything coming from their FICA taxes.
  - DougWebb 13y ago
    I'm about to turn 43, and I don't expect to see anything coming from my FICA taxes. I know that my FICA taxes are funding today's retirees, and not being held for me until I retire, and that unless the working population starts growing significantly larger soon, there won't be enough workers paying into the system when I'm ready to retire. What I expect is going to happen is that the retirement age will keep climbing, and I'll be chasing it up until I die. I also expect that income/wealth-based limits will be imposed which will cap whatever I can get well below the amount I'll need to come anywhere close to replacing what I can earn by continuing to work. I'm disappointed by this, but I accept that it's necessary to keep the system running for the people who need it more than I expect to, and I'm grateful that as a software engineer I'm likely to be able to earn a good income doing work that I enjoy for as long as I want to.
    - hga 13y ago
      "I know that my FICA taxes are funding today's retirees, and not being held for me until I retire...." And this is not even completely true. From 1983 to 2009 the surplus in FICA taxes compared to expenses was just spent (there are filing cabinets with unmarketable IOUs from the government, what Al Gore's "lockbox" was all about); only in 2010 did the main Social Security fund start running a real deficit requiring money from the general fund. I wonder about the retirement age climbing concept. Among other things, it's an even heavier burden on the young, e.g. your not retiring means 1 or 2 of them won't get a job in the first place. How long will they support a system that squeezes them so much? (There's lots more than this, of course, like non-recourse student loans.) What makes people your age think you'll be able to keep your jobs? I said "1 or 2" since its quite common to replace more expensive older workers with a couple of young ones. Way too many programmers my age, a decade older, are finding it nearly impossible to stay employed in the field (another reason we don't care for the H-1B, L-1 etc. visa programs); I sincerely hope your optimism "that as a software engineer I'm likely to be able to earn a good income doing work that I enjoy for as long as I want to." is well founded. I found it more and more difficult to find work starting sometime after age 35 until I got a clue and hid my age (easy since fortunate genetics makes me look decades younger than I am ... well, until I slip up and e.g. mention PDP-11s, which once got an "How old are you?!?!!" exclamation in an interview :-).
antidaily 13y ago
is 26 considered young? Can't you be covered under your parents until then?
gpvos 13y ago
It's called solidarity.

16 points by tocomment 13y ago

hga 13y ago

An inevitable outcome of the switch to community rating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_rating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_rating

bti 13y ago

Ouch. I am in the process of starting my own business and plan to eventually be doing it full time. I am currently 24 so I'm guessing once I turn 26 I will need to buy my own insurance. Any freelancers/small-business owners have any advice on this once the ACA goes into effect?

nmcfarl 13y ago

This was inevitable. The group that pays the least, when it is folded into a larger more varied group, will pay more. There was no way this was not going to work this way. However - how many young men who are not insured by their employers, pick up medical insurance? I know I didn’t. I’d imagine this is just guys who've gotten married and had a kid AND who are on the upper end of the income bracket for the uninsured.

ScottWhigham 13y ago
However - how many young men who are not insured by their employers... Maybe that comment works on reddit or other sites but I think many if not most of us here at HN work for ourselves or for startups who likely aren't able to provide across-the-board healthcare coverage for all employees. Given that the 20s and 30s are "the years to have kids", this group would include almost all budding entrepreneurs who want to get started in their 20s and have a family while doing so.
dragonwriter 13y ago
> However - how many young men who are not insured by their employers, pick up medical insurance? Under the ACA, essentially all of them will be required to.
- hga 13y ago
  Not quite. Many people are getting their work hours reduced to less than 30 a week, a part time status exempts employers from Obamacare mandates. From "food service" workers to higher education adjunct professors. Tax something and you'll get less of it. This most certainly includes "young" employment.
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    > Not quite. Many people are getting their work hours reduced to less than 30 a week, a part time status exempts employers from Obamacare mandates. Irrelevant to the comment this was offered in response to, which discusses the individuals that will be required to get insurance, not the employers that will be required to provide it. Essentially all individuals will be obligated to purchase insurance (with a penalty/tax if they fail to do so); in some cases, employers will provide it (either by existing mandate, expanded mandate, or choice), but that's mostly beside the point. > Tax something and you'll get less of it. This most certainly includes "young" employment. Well, yes, that certainly is a fundamental problem with imposing special additional taxes on employment as opposed to other income as we do through payroll taxes which promotes (given equal efficiency before considering taxation) capital-heavy over labor-heavy methods of production and suppresses employment, but since PPACA doesn't contain special taxes on "young employment", I'm not sure how its germane to the immediate conversation.
- nmcfarl 13y ago
  This is actually what I was trying to point out with that statement - but I clearly muddled it. The class who will see the biggest jump are probably not the young men who are insured and pay for insurance. But the young men who are uninsured and don't pay for insurance.

dclowd9901 13y ago

Is this really news? It's pretty well known that young men have the lowest health care costs of any demographic. In a system of distributed or shared cost, the community who costs the least to maintain will inevitably pay more for it. I'm ok with it, personally, because I have no right to my being just as no one does.

napoleond 13y ago

As others have said, this is inevitable. However, maybe the young men will appreciate it when they become old men.

eavc 13y ago
Or when their parents become ill. Or for purposes of society.
hga 13y ago
Or maybe these young men realize that the Federal government's unfunded liabilities exceeding 90 trillion dollars, prior to adding Obamacare, will not be redeemed, because they simply cannot be? Seriously, I don't know your age, but are you at all confident that Social Security and Medicare will be there for you all the way to when you might die of natural causes? I seem to remember that surveys say the "young" don't believe it; if they're young enough, they don't expect to see anything coming from their FICA taxes.
- DougWebb 13y ago
  I'm about to turn 43, and I don't expect to see anything coming from my FICA taxes. I know that my FICA taxes are funding today's retirees, and not being held for me until I retire, and that unless the working population starts growing significantly larger soon, there won't be enough workers paying into the system when I'm ready to retire. What I expect is going to happen is that the retirement age will keep climbing, and I'll be chasing it up until I die. I also expect that income/wealth-based limits will be imposed which will cap whatever I can get well below the amount I'll need to come anywhere close to replacing what I can earn by continuing to work. I'm disappointed by this, but I accept that it's necessary to keep the system running for the people who need it more than I expect to, and I'm grateful that as a software engineer I'm likely to be able to earn a good income doing work that I enjoy for as long as I want to.
  - hga 13y ago
    "I know that my FICA taxes are funding today's retirees, and not being held for me until I retire...." And this is not even completely true. From 1983 to 2009 the surplus in FICA taxes compared to expenses was just spent (there are filing cabinets with unmarketable IOUs from the government, what Al Gore's "lockbox" was all about); only in 2010 did the main Social Security fund start running a real deficit requiring money from the general fund. I wonder about the retirement age climbing concept. Among other things, it's an even heavier burden on the young, e.g. your not retiring means 1 or 2 of them won't get a job in the first place. How long will they support a system that squeezes them so much? (There's lots more than this, of course, like non-recourse student loans.) What makes people your age think you'll be able to keep your jobs? I said "1 or 2" since its quite common to replace more expensive older workers with a couple of young ones. Way too many programmers my age, a decade older, are finding it nearly impossible to stay employed in the field (another reason we don't care for the H-1B, L-1 etc. visa programs); I sincerely hope your optimism "that as a software engineer I'm likely to be able to earn a good income doing work that I enjoy for as long as I want to." is well founded. I found it more and more difficult to find work starting sometime after age 35 until I got a clue and hid my age (easy since fortunate genetics makes me look decades younger than I am ... well, until I slip up and e.g. mention PDP-11s, which once got an "How old are you?!?!!" exclamation in an interview :-).

antidaily 13y ago

is 26 considered young? Can't you be covered under your parents until then?

gpvos 13y ago

It's called solidarity.