Will Millennials Sign Up for Obamacare?
If 28-year-old Matt Bitz, a waiter in South Dakota with a college degree in English, doesn’t land a job with health benefits in the next few weeks, he will be at his computer on Oct. 1 ready to execute his plan B: buy insurance through the new health-care marketplaces that will be introduced next month.
Bitz, who has been uninsured for the last five years while working at a movie theater and his current restaurant, says he has shelled out $15,000 to $20,000 in that time to cover routine checkups as well as a handful of tests to diagnose his underactive thyroid. Far from talking about being young and free of health problems, Bitz describes the relief and peace of mind that health insurance will give him. “A very good friend of mine was diagnosed with lupus when he was 25,” he says. “Things can happen.”
Bitz is one of an estimated 17 million uninsured young adults who are eligible to buy coverage in marketplaces set up by the Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare. The success of the legislation depends partially on whether the young and healthy — a group that has often been stereotyped as considering themselves invincible — sign up or pay a financial penalty: in 2014, $95 per adult or 1 percent of household income, whichever is greater, rising to $695 or 2.5 percent in 2016. (Certain people, including those who earn too little to file tax returns, are exempt from the penalty.)