The Lost Generation: Young People Have Been Had

NRO2Sooner or later the kids are going to wake up, grow up, and become conservatives. Here’s an important article from Victor Davis Hanson:

Obamacare depends on Millennials picking up the tab — as they already are for other entitlements — in the midst of a bad economy.

There are all sorts of time bombs embedded within Obamacare.

Will we force doctors to treat the millions of new Medicaid patients who are signing up for services that can be only partially reimbursed? How exactly will the IRS collect penalties from millions of off-the-books youth who choose not to buy coverage?

Of the newly insured who chose not to buy health insurance in the past, how many will follow through on their initial signups with steady monthly premium payments? If many don’t, how will we collect what they owe? Will all those who lost their coverage have enough money to buy the costlier Obamacare replacement plan?

Among these unanswered questions, the most disturbing pertain to the demand that millions of so-called Millennials must purchase health insurance — estimated at about $1,700 a year — that they will hardly use. Their premiums supposedly will subsidize older, in-need Americans who cannot pay the full costs of coverage that they will draw on frequently.

We forget that young people are already targeted for a number of government redistribution plans. Of America’s age cohorts, the under-30 bunch is the least likely to be employed, and the most likely to work at low-wage or part-time jobs.

Millennials already pay high payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare coverage for the elderly. Yet most economists predict that both programs will soon prove insolvent and will not be able to extend the present level of benefits to young contributors when they retire.

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