WHY BUY INSURANCE YOU DON’T NEED?

How do you convince young people to buy medical insurance that they do not need?  Aside from a faulty roll out of the automated system, this appears to be the conundrum of health care reform.  Young adults are not enthusiastic to save universal health care which offers no immediate advantage, when the powers that be are doing nothing to save them. 

The truth is that baby boomers entering retirement have already left their children an economy that cannot provide meaningful employment and saddled them with national debt beyond comprehension.  Now young people are being asked to be the first in line to prop up the health care system for the benefit of older and poorer Americans.  It seems like a case of adding insult to injury.

I believe there is a realistic solution to this dilemma that will quickly convince our young healthy citizens to buy into and come to embrace this needed reform.  My view is that young people do not object to the goals of universal health care, they object to the perception of unequal sacrifice and cost sharing. We need to demonstrate that progressive social and economic advances work both ways.  We must develop new programs to relieve young Americans of their educational loans, make it easier to obtain a first mortgage and subsidize jobs programs with additional training for the new economy.  In the health care area, offer young adults subsidized memberships to health clubs and wellness centers as an immediate benefit for their participation in the Affordable Care Act.  

 Lastly, we must raise taxes on older Americans so that boomers are part of the solution.  In short, make our young adults relevant again as the economy springs back to life.  Make it clear that we are all in this experiment of democratic socialism together.

 Once it is established that the goal is to help prepare young Americans for their generation to take over and not simply to drain them of resources to support their elders, the cost of universal health care will not seem so oppressive.  Looking backward, a few years from now, every young person will know someone who got sick unexpectedly and was helped by the insurance.  Eventually the young will get older and realize that to perpetuate lower cost medical care they need their children to participate in the program.  Healthcare reform will be viewed in the same vein as other entitlement programs, like social security.

In this age of social media our young people understand the concept that the more people that participate in an activity, the better the outcome.  Think of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.  This culture of social inclusion and expansion must be exploited in explaining universal healthcare to our young.  After all, it was Steve Jobs and other tech entrepreneurs who convinced so many young Americans to buy products and services that they really did not need and changed the world.  In a short time our youth could not live without their smart phones and social networking.

The same result is possible with health insurance. Young adults will come to appreciate regular medical checkups and targeted programs to keep them healthy.  All Americans will be better off at a lower cost as a result.