ACA hurts millennials

Add Washington State University students to the millions whose insurance plans have been eliminated by the Affordable Care Act. I purchased the plan in 2013 before receiving a letter that ACA requirements would raise my rates several hundred dollars for needless treatments, and the plan will now be eliminated after 2014.

This mirrors a Forbes magazine analysis showing that student insurance plans across the country are being eliminated or are seeing rate hikes of as much as 1,000 percent.

These policies existed for decades, reviewed and approved by countless legal and regulatory bodies, so calling them “insufficient” at a moment of political convenience is a lie. Their purchasers, such as students, tend to be lower risk. The mathematical motive for eliminating them is to force low-risk individuals into high-risk pools to offset surging costs, requiring them to pay radically more and receive less care.

Clearly, the ACA was designed to discriminate against healthy individuals, especially millennials, rather than to fix the risk problems embedded within national health care costs. According to several government analyses, young workers should anticipate higher costs, less care, higher taxes, reduced work hours, and fewer jobs as a result of the law, all with more supposedly “unforeseen” consequences to come.

Jesse Waite

Pullman