Kids, time to support your forebears

The original concept of this blog was to discuss the major political and social issues that face my generation, the generation which has been defined by researchers Morley Winograd and Mike Hais as the "Millenials," born between 1982 and 2003 (I don't quite fit in that category, being an '81 baby, but I'm definitely not a Gen-Xer!) While previous postings may have strayed from that theme somewhat, today is a different type of day.

Following yesterday's posting regarding health care reform, a timely article by Jim Angle at Fox News (no, not kidding) caught my eye. Probably the most underreported aspect of health care reform is that for a reform effort to be successful, it must rely in large part on the participation of the roughly 18 million young, healthy, uninsured people to buy into the health insurance market. As Angle reports

the health care reform bills in Congress require insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and prohibit them from charging sick people any more than others. That would force up insurance rates unless healthy young people buy insurance and in effect dilute the impact of older, less healthy people.

By having millions of previously uninsured, healthy, younger people start paying premiums while not using as much care as those who are sick or older, the insurance companies (and a public option, if it comes to fruition) would be able to mitigate the additional costs they will incur through expanding coverage.

For many years, health insurers have used certain methods to hold their costs down that were used at the expense of their customers, including denying coverage to people with "pre-existing conditions" ranging from mental illness and chronic conditions to the insurers denying coverage due to some rather more creative "conditions". Another tool of the insurance companies is called "rescission," a truly nefarious tactic of dropping a paying customer from their insurance plan when they need major or long-term treatment (think cancer, lupus, etc.) by claiming that the customer lied on their application form by not listing certain pre-existing conditions. What could those pre-existing conditions be? Some common ones are not listing occasional back pain or previous acne treatments in one's application for health insurance, although one would assume there would be some actual fraud caught once in a while...or is it? This from the Washington Post article above:

In the past 18 months, California's five largest insurers paid almost $19 million in fines for marooning policyholders who had fallen ill. That includes a $1 million fine against Health Net, which admitted offering bonuses to employees for finding reasons to cancel policies, according to company documents released in court. (emphasis added)

Rooting out pervasive fraud amongst the insurance customer base became such good business that a bonus structure was built on top of it for the most "effective" employees.

Now that the insurers will no longer be able to drop peoples' insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions and rescission will be largely curtailed under any sort of health care reform plan, the companies will need to find a new cost-saving mechanism, and it is the 18 million uninsured healthy young people they are targeting. It is the insurers who pushed hard for the universal mandate that every American must buy health insurance or be penalized; that provision ensures that the customer base will be swelled by the millions, and it also ensures that the low-cost segment of the population (younger folks) would be part of the system as well.

So why is it that young people are the ones being manipulated in this proposed new system? Naturally, it is the same as with any other political question; most younger people aren't paying attention, and furthermore, they aren't regular voters. When you have retirees threatening elected officials to "keep your government hands off my Medicare” those electeds sit up and take notice, since older folks vote in large numbers. On the other hand, federal legislators can then pull stunts like this with impunity:

"In most states, there actually isn't a limit on how much older people can be charged vs. younger people," said Anne Kim, director of Third Way Economics. "So in some states, older individuals pay six or seven times in premiums what younger people do."

But the Senate would take that down to 3-1. The House would make it 2-1.

That means older people will pay less but young people will pay more.

"If you limit the amount premiums can vary based on a person's age, that can result in premiums increasing by 50 or 60 percent for workers under the age of 30," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans.

In fact, a study by the Urban Institute found that going to a 2-1 age rating would push up premium costs for the youngest adults by almost $1,100 to just under $3,000 dollars a year.

I have been without insurance a number of times in my life. I've see the premiums I could be paying under COBRA when I've left jobs that provided me with health care, and they were far beyond what I would consider affordable. It seems quite doubtful that many Americans in their 20s will be able to afford an extra $3,000 a year, but the politicians are betting that we aren't paying attention. And they are betting correctly.

Why isn't there an outcry from the younger generations that will have to pay taxes and/or premiums to support whatever reforms come out of Congress, successful or not, for the rest of their lives? Perhaps the intricacies of House/Senate committee deliberations aren't the most riveting dramas for young people to follow compared with the dramas unfolding on their Facebook pages, but this time it's personal. Perhaps there needs to be a youth lobbying organization, akin to the AARP for seniors; we have youth-oriented organizing groups like Rock the Vote, and Campus Progress (a group I must admit I'm not familiar with, but funded by the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy group) but seriously, we need LOBBYISTS! Until some serious campaign finance reform gets passed that creates public funding of elections, young people need to get into the Beltway and into the offices of members of Congress the same way the big players do, with issue advocacy and influence-peddling, combined with grassroots organizing. Lobbying is a four-letter word to me, but I see no other way to get our issues addressed fairly in a health care reform plan. The older generations and the insurance companies need us to keep health care affordable. Congress and the President need us to continue to vote for them. So why don't we use that leverage to get the changes we want and need in the reform bill? More to come on this later.