The Obama administration on Tuesday begins a series of enrollment drives on college campuses and social media, desperate to infuse youth into its Obamacare marketplace.
However, there's a fundamental problem — the very design of Obamacare incentivizes millennials not to enroll in the first place, The Hill reports.
Young adults are allowed to stay on their parents insurance until the age of 26.
"If we didn't allow these kids to go on their parents' plans, many of these kids would have gone to the exchange and would have created a more stable marketplace under the exchange," John McDonough, one of the authors of Obamacare.
The vision was that adults under the age of 34 would comprise 38 percent of the program; instead that number is only at 28 percent, making the enrollees older in average age.
Older means sicker, making the cost of doing business untenable for insurers, many of which have bailed on the program altogether, causing the recent announcement of higher premiums with fewer choices.
"If you want to get young healthy people to sign up on the exchanges, then don't give them other options that are better," Joe Antos of the American Enterprise Institute told The Hill. "Signing up with your parents is clearly the better option for most younger people."
Then again, thanks to the provision, there was a near 47 percent drop in uninsured adults between the ages of 18 and 25, The Hill reported.
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