Shockingly, the White House is trying to claim this is good news.
The losses the insurance companies sustain because of this are going to be covered by the taxpayers in the form of a bailout.
Via Washington Examiner:
Just 24 percent of Americans signing up for coverage under President Obama’s health care law through December were part of the young adult demographic, the Department of Health and Human Servicesannounced Monday — well below the nearly 39 percent the White House had once deemed essential to the law’s success.
In a new report, HHS said that through Dec. 28 (about halfway through the six-month open enrollment period), roughly 2.2 million Americans signed up for coverage on one of the law’shealth insurance exchanges. That’s well below the administration’s target of 3.3 million. And HHS still hasn’t disclosed how many of those who have signed up for insurance have actually paid their first premiums, which is necessary for enrollment to be finalized.
Leading up to the launch of the exchanges Oct. 1, administration officials had been telling reporters that in order to be a success, 2.7 million of the projected 7 million enrollees in the health care law’s exchanges would need to be from the young adult demographic. Attracting a critical mass of young and healthy enrollees was seen as necessary to offset the cost of covering older and sicker Americans, particularly those with pre-existing conditions. But in the report, HHS said that just 24 percent of those who signed up so far were aged 18 to 34.
In December, a report from the Kaiser Family Foundation identified a “worst-case scenario” situation in which just 25 percent of enrollees were in the 18-to-34 demographic.