Oops!

It seems those visiting the Healthcare.gov website have other things in mind than rushing out to enroll in the insurance exchanges. According to the site the most popular question is how to get an exemption from having health coverage. The second most popular is from people who presumably are already in one of the various government-run preexisting condition Insurance plans that will end as of December 31, 2013. Getting ready to enroll in the new health insurance marketplace ranks third.

Since the economics of the ACA require the so called young invincibles to sign up for a product many of them feel they don't need, this isn't a good sign for supporters of Obamacare. Indeed, the tactics being used to solicit young people to signing up have the potential to backfire. It was one thing to be herded into voting for Obama because that was the fashionable thing to do. It is altogether another thing to be buttonholed by insurance agents at the drug store, get canvassed door to door or to have your social media bombarded with attempts to herd one into paying up to several thousand dollars a year for a product one feels no compelling need to purchase.

The young seldom like being told what to do by authority figures and the argument that it's for their own good often falls on deaf years. ...convincing a law student who waits tables part-time to give up $50 or $100 a month for vague insurance guarantees is one of health reform's tougher sells. But "it won't be the choice between a $95 penalty and $4,000 for a policy," said Jennifer Tolbert, state policy director for the Kaiser Family foundation. "It will be the choice between a $95 penalty and $200 that will actually give them pretty decent insurance coverage." Yeah, that would have had me rushing right out to buy insurance when I was in my 20s and disposable income was scarce.