It’s cliché but true; always be careful what you wish for. According to the Washington Post, young adults (under 30) who were such key actors in Obama’s election back in November are likely to pay a big share of the president’s health-care reform costs.

Drafting young adults into any health-care reform package is crucial to paying for it. As low-cost additions to insurance pools, young adults would help dilute the expense of covering older, sicker people. Depending on how Congress requires insurers to price their policies, this group could even wind up paying disproportionately hefty premiums — effectively subsidizing coverage for their parents.

In fact, if I understand this sentence correctly, this could be a reason why Obama insists that 47 million people should be covered, whether they need it or want it or not, rather than the 10 million who do not have health-care because they truly can’t pay for it. He needs 47 million people to pay for his reform. Nice.

I like this too:

But some young people — nicknamed the “young invincibles” — are also likelier than other Americans to assume that they won’t need health insurance or to decide that they’d rather spend their money on other things.
To discourage that attitude, the Finance Committee bill would fine individuals who do not purchase coverage. An early draft of the proposal set the penalty at $750 or $950 per year for single people, depending on income. But according to various insurance experts, even the least expensive plan under the bill could cost more than $100 per month, making it cheaper for people to pay the fine than to buy insurance.

Ah, the power of coercion. This is more evidence that lawmakers really think they know how to run our lives better than us.

The whole thing here.