Politics

What Those Youth-Oriented Obamacare Ads Leave Out: It's Generational Theft!

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I've got a column up at Time.com (and in the next print edition of Mr. Luce's mag) talking about those awful "Got Insurance?" ads aimed at getting Millennials to sign up for Obamacare.

Here's the start of the piece:

Is massive stupidity covered under Obamacare? What about sexual promiscuity and heavy drinking? Those are some of the questions raised by a controversial ad campaign that aims to encourage younger Americans to sign up for health-insurance plans created by the Affordable Care Act.

But there's a deeper issue that the new "Got Insurance?" campaign ignores completely: Why should young and relatively poor people be forced to sign up for insurance that charges them above-market rates to subsidize rates for old and relatively wealthy people?

I trust that I'm not overly optimistic when I conclude:

Younger Americans may indeed be reckless enough to do keg stands and have unprotected sex on a regular basis, but they're not so dumb as the "Got Insurance?" ads–or the architects of Obamacare–seem to think.

Read the whole thing.