by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n There are all sorts of time bombs embedded within Obamacare.<\/p>\n Will we force doctors to treat the millions of new Medicaid patients who are signing up for services that can be only partially reimbursed? How exactly will the IRS collect penalties from millions of off-the-books youth who choose not to buy coverage?<\/p>\n Of the newly insured who chose not to buy health insurance in the past, how many will follow through on their initial signups with steady monthly premium payments? If many don\u2019t, how will we collect what they owe? Will all those who lost their coverage have enough money to buy the costlier Obamacare replacement plan?<\/p>\n Among these unanswered questions, the most disturbing pertain to the demand that millions of so-called Millennials must purchase health insurance \u2014 estimated at about $1,700 a year \u2014 that they will hardly use. Their premiums supposedly will subsidize older, in-need Americans who cannot pay the full costs of coverage that they will draw on frequently.<\/p>\n We forget that young people are already targeted for a number of government redistribution plans. Of America\u2019s age cohorts, the under-30 bunch is the least likely to be employed, and the most likely to work at low-wage or part-time jobs.<\/p>\n Millennials already pay high payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare coverage for the elderly. Yet most economists predict that both programs will soon prove insolvent and will not be able to extend the present level of benefits to young contributors when they retire.<\/p>\n We are currently in the greatest economic slowdown since the Great Depression. The now normal 7 percent unemployment hits the young especially hard. Their jobless rate typically ranges from two to three times higher than the national average. Requiring employers to provide Obamacare coverage will spike unemployment and, again, do the most harm to those who are just entering the workforce.<\/p>\n Young people in America owe in aggregate about $1 trillion in unpaid student loans. While some of their interest rates are subsidized, many are not and range from 5 percent to 9 percent at a time when mortgages can still be had for about 4 percent.<\/p>\n Universities consistently upped their tuition costs at a rate higher than inflation. They assumed that young people could always borrow more money each year to subsidize a mostly unaccountable institution.<\/p>\n The curricula of far too many universities do not inculcate sufficient math and language skills. Young people did not dream up the race, class, and gender industry that often crowds out skills-based classes and substitutes therapeutic \u201cstudies\u201d courses. At a time when students need traditional general education more than ever, colleges are turning out graduates with costly degrees, obtained on borrowed money, whom employers do not see as broadly educated job applicants.<\/p>\n Obamacare will not, as the president promised, \u201clower the cost of your premiums by up to $2,500 a year.\u201d Most estimates suggest that the Affordable Care Act will add trillions to the already huge national debt. The current $17 trillion aggregate debt is largely a result of out-of-control entitlement obligations that skyrocketed over the last 20 years and largely were paid out to those over the age of 30.<\/p>\n When interest rates creep up, the cost of servicing the national debt may claim one-third of the yearly federal budget. The millennial generation will come of age in time to pay higher taxes and receive fewer government services to cover for prior generations who wanted more things on credit billed to their grandchildren.<\/p>\n It is often easy to caricature the young. Today\u2019s youth see expensive iPhones and iPads as as necessary as a prior generation\u2019s cheap pencils and pens. Some younger people wear sneakers and shades that cost more than three months of health-care premiums. Suburban kids are as likely to be playing video games on weekend mornings as cutting the grass and raking leaves.<\/p>\n All that said, the aging \u201960s generation has far more to answer for. We are handing over a very different America to our young people. They have received a worse education than did prior generations at a far greater cost in mostly borrowed money.<\/p>\n There are fewer job opportunities and higher taxes. Others ran up the huge debt; young people will largely pay for it over the next half-century. Early marriage and child-raising, a nice house, two cars, and pay-as-you-go college for the kids are all becoming a fantasy of a bygone generation.<\/p>\n Professors talked mellifluously about trendy green issues, gay rights, and abortion without ever explaining that those lectures came at high financial costs. \u201cHope and change\u201d benevolent government sounded great to the young and idealistic. What was left out was that a captivated cohort was taken for granted and thereby seen as an easy mark to pay for it.<\/p>\n In short, young people have been had.<\/p>\n Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.<\/em>\u00a0His latest book is<\/em>\u00a0The Savior Generals<\/a><\/span>,\u00a0published this spring by<\/em>\u00a0Bloomsbury Books.<\/em>\u00a0You can reach him by e-mailing\u00a0<\/em>author@victorhanson.com<\/a><\/em>. <\/em><\/p>\n \u00a9 2013 Tribune Media Services, Inc.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The ACA depends on Millennials picking up the tab — as they already are for other entitlements — in the midst of a bad economy. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 There are all sorts of time bombs embedded within Obamacare. Will we force doctors to treat the millions of new Medicaid patients who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[247,278],"tags":[12,42,1023,1064,40,83,426,67,677],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1MC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6745,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamacare-is-dead-long-live-obamacare\/","url_meta":{"origin":6858,"position":0},"title":"Obamacare Is Dead. Long Live Obamacare!","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 In the next 90 days, the Obama administration will have to declare victory and then abandon most of Obamacare. The legislation defies the laws of physics\u2014more and broader coverage for more people at\u00a0less\u00a0cost\u2014as well as logic: Young people, on average as a cohort\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6799,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/affordable-care-of-patient-protection-or-obamacare\/","url_meta":{"origin":6858,"position":1},"title":"Affordable Care or Patient Protection or Obamacare?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 There are some rumors that the administration wants to distance itself from the slang \u201cObamacare,\u201d a term the president embraced in the 2012 campaign but now finds hurtful to his polls and his colleagues in the Congress. But what would be alternatives? We\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6659,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/new-coke-health-care\/","url_meta":{"origin":6858,"position":2},"title":"New Coke Health Care?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 22, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 The president has compared the rollout disaster of Obamacare to temporary tech glitches with a new-model iPhone. But a better comparison is the disastrous 1985 campaign to replace Coca-Cola with \u201cNew Coke,\u201d a new sweeter formula that was supposed to stop Pepsi from\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6778,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamacare-speak\/","url_meta":{"origin":6858,"position":3},"title":"Obamacare-Speak","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 21, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Obama administration is altering its language like there's no tomorrow. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 The Obama administration once gave us \u201cman-caused disasters\u201d for acts of terrorism and \u201cworkplace violence\u201d for the Fort Hood shootings. Now it has trumped those past linguistic contortions by changing words to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6705,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamacare-and-human-nature\/","url_meta":{"origin":6858,"position":4},"title":"Obamacare and Human Nature","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner Obamacare was predicated on the idea that it would be techie-driven and noble in inspiration, and therefore, presto, just had to work. 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