Death Spiral Watch: California Also Enrolling Mostly Older Folks in Obamacare

Per @verumserum's article at Breitbart, Obama is hoping for Obamacare enrollees to make up 38% of the total, because young enrollees will pay more in premiums than they are expected to take out of the system.

The young and healthy are thus the keys to subsidizing the whole Risky Scheme.

And in "success story" California?

The young, 18-34, only make up 23% of the pool.

That's not good.

Plus, the enrollees skew pretty old:

The report released Thursday by Covered California, which operates the online exchange, shows that 56 percent of the 30,830 people who had enrolled in plans by Oct. 31 were in the 45- to 64-year-old category.

Furthermore: We don't know if the few young people enrolling are young and healthy. We merely know they're young. If they're young and unhealthy, then they don't subsidize anything at all -- then they're net takers out of the system, and they will speed it towards fiscal meltdown.

It seems likely to me that the young people singing up for Obamacare skew towards the unhealthy side of things.

So it seems likely that Obamacare is not only not signing up enough young people, but among the young people it is signing up, it's not signing up nearly enough of the right kind of young people -- healthy ones, those who will subsidize everyone else.

Oh and one more thing: Any young person getting a large subsidy obviously isn't subsidizing anyone else. So what Obamacare really needs is enrollees who are

1, young,

2, healthy,

and 3, making enough money to pay almost full freight.

So far we know they're not getting enough young people, period. I doubt they're doing much better on points 2 and 3.

Thanks to @johnekdahl.

posted by Ace at 04:07 PM

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