Do young adults need health insurance? Come on. We’re in college; we could eat plastic bags and still be healthy. This is how most young adults think, and it’s one reason why people aged 19 to 29 represent a third of the uninsured in the United States.
The other, much bigger reason is that we can’t afford it by ourselves. We need help, and President Obama’s health-care reforms were a good first step.
But proponents of the bill’s repeal are dragging us right back in a wave of blind idealism. The 2010 reforms raised the maximum age at which we can remain on our parents’ health plans from 19 to 26. This has several advantages (aside from the obvious fact that it provides cash-strapped young adults with affordable care).
First, by including us as dependents, our parents avoid having to purchase individual coverage for us at much higher costs. They can help us and help themselves at the same time. Second, the change eases the pressure on our age group from the bill’s longer-term provisions, which will require most people to purchase coverage. Third, if health insurance companies can enroll more young adults, they can lower rates for older people — who need health insurance most.
Making it easier for us to buy coverage makes it easier on everyone else. Sound good?
So there must be some other reason why Republicans in Congress like House Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) want to repeal the health insurance bill. Maybe they don’t like the fact that it bans insurers from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions.
No, that can’t be it. Could it be that the bill will reduce the national deficit by $143 billion over 10 years? Not likely. Could it be that it requires insurers to devote at least 85 cents of every premium dollar to health care rather than to administrative costs? How about the provision that prevents insurers from imposing a lifetime cap on the amount of health services you can receive? I doubt it.
No, Republicans and Tea Partiers say they oppose the bill because it emblemizes Big-Government intervention in the lives of Americans. They say it strips us of the right to make our own decisions and puts more power into the hands of an administration that has already seized control of our banks, insurance companies and car companies. For Boehner and his colleagues, it’s a battle for ideals, not policies.
The truth is that many of these arguments are not only outdated, but they conflict with what their alleged followers really want. No family, Republican or Democratic, wants to see their child denied health care because of a pre-existing condition. No senior citizen, liberal or conservative, wants to see his or her insurance rates go up because providers can’t sell to younger people. And yet Republicans are seeking to dismantle legislation that prevents these things simply because it deviates from their capitalist vision — the same vision that led us into a recession and forced government takeover of industry in the first place.
One problem is that our terminology and our labels are obsolete. Opponents of the health care bill criticize it as “socialist.” Do these same people also object to Social Security and Medicare? These socialist programs are the two most popular programs in the country.
Forty percent of Americans call themselves “conservatives.” What, exactly, are they trying to conserve? The capitalist infrastructure that allowed banks to run amok, that allowed BP to drill in the Gulf without any oversight? The Bush administration that ran the economy into the ground? With 9 percent of Americans unemployed and the accumulated national debt at $13.7 trillion, do we really want to conserve the system that got us here?
The term “liberal” is no better. Liberals define themselves as open to change, but what do they want to change? Simply labeling oneself liberal is unproductive. We need to abandon these purely rhetorical affiliations and consider what we, as individuals, really want from our government.
The maximum-age provision of the health care bill is a perfect example of the conflict between alleged ideals and real interests. Republicans want to repeal ObamaCare, but surely they want young adults to be able to afford health care. They want their own kids to be able to afford it. If we can mandate comprehensive care and make it affordable for young people at the same time, why shouldn’t we?
Our nation has outgrown its capitalist shell, and still our glorification of outdated values wins out over rational policy. Universal health care is the norm throughout the industrialized world, and yet we continue to let “conservative” ideals stifle the potential of this system in our own country.
If opponents of the bill can look at themselves — and their kids — as humans in need of health care and not as party affiliates whose independence is being threatened, America will be a healthier place, and our youth will have coverage whether they think they need it or not.
Ari Comart is a College senior from Needham, Mass.
