By Betsy McCaughey
The New York Times took a fall for President Barack Obama, running a front page headline today: “Young Adults Make Gains in Health Insurance Coverage.”
The story goes on to quote Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius declaring “The Affordable Care Act is working.”
This is how the Obama administration and New York Times whitewashed the latest data from the Census Bureau and another survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on uninsured Americans. The data from both surveys, released this week, show that 900,000 more Americans were insured in 2010 than in 2009. The ONLY group that gained insurance was “young adults,” meaning people ages 19 through 25.
The new data show that for every other age group, the proportion uninsured and the actual number uninsured went up. The New York Times headline should have read “There is no tooth fairy.” Mandating that insurance cover adults on their parents’ policies pushes up costs, making health insurance less affordable for everyone else. Though the requirement did not go into effect until this September 23, many insurers jumped the gun and extended the coverage to young adults in 2010, thereby pushing up costs. Eliminating annual caps on coverage also pushed up costs.