Man, Representative Jim Moran (D., Virginia) is offering some blunt truths Democrats don’t want to hear, now that he’s announced his retirement.
What’s striking is that Moran isn’t offering the usual, “well, we don’t have enough young people signing up for insurance, but we still have time.” He’s saying, “I don’t think we’re going to get enough.” He’s not clinging to hope anymore.
Congressman Jim Moran (D-Va.) is voicing concern that the entirety Affordable Care Act could unravel because not enough young people are signing up . . .
“I’m afraid that the millennials, if you will, are less likely to sign up. I think they feel more independent, I think they feel a little more invulnerable than prior generations,” Moran says. “But I don’t think we’re going to get enough young people signing up to make this bill work as it was intended to financially.”
If Moran’s prediction is correct, the whole law could unravel. He says there just isn’t enough incentive for healthy young people to sign up for insurance.
“And, frankly, there’s some legitimacy to their concern because the government spends about $7 for the elderly for every $1 it spends on the young,” Moran says.
Moran supported covering everyone under Medicare, which would have been expensive but have avoided this problem. Now Moran is running short on solutions.
“I just don’t know how we’re going to do it frankly,” he says. “If we had a solution I’d be telling the president right now.”
The article closes with,
Democrats say another part of the problem is that Republicans remain bent on repealing the law and aren’t working with them to reform some of the glaring flaws in it.
First, why is it outrageous for Republicans to attempt to repeal a law that even its supporters are now saying isn’t working, as Moran says, or that has “glaring flaws”?
Secondly, what Democratic bill to reform some of the “glaring flaws” are Republicans blocking?
Thirdly, what “reform” would get millennials to sign up for a product that they already must purchase, or else pay a special tax of 1 percent of their income?
Perhaps Moran could try grabbing an eight-year-old boy and carrying him to a computer and making him sign up.