To be fair, all shared risk systems work on this model. Health insurance plans need young, healthy people to offset the cost of older people who (generally) need more, and more expensive, health care. Along the same lines, car insurance needs more older drivers to offset the younger, inexperienced drivers who are statistically more likely to generate claims.

pay through the nose so old people get their healthcare cheaper

You misspelled sick or perhaps unisurable. Also, sufficiently old people qualify for medicare, and that's been cut to the tune of $750 billion over 10 years. Allegedly, anyway - future Congresses are not bound by what the current or past Congresses do.

As for the young taking it in the shorts, I have little sympathy: many of them voted for the current administration twice, so they should just shut up and take their medicine. Votes have consequences, my young apprentices.

Not all shared risk systems work on this model. Car insurers do not need older drivers to offset riskier younger drivers, because they are allowed to charge the latter more for their insurance. I don't know how much price discrimination the ACA allows, but the answer is definitely not "enough to fully account for differences in risk." Hence, the need for young adults to sign up for insurance they won't use.

"The administration is engaged in an all-out push to increase young people's enrollment in ObamaCare with just two weeks left before the deadline to acquire insurance."

If it was so important to have the young people who voted for Obama twice to sign up for insurance, WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THE ALL-OUT PUSH SIX MONTHS AGO? Why didn't they do it three months ago when most of the website issues were resolved? Why didn't they do it three weeks ago ahead of the one-month deadline? And how much money is this "push" going to cost? Will it result in a ROI? Why do I get the feeling I'm never going to get answers to these questions?

A forward from my sister:

The person who calculated this bit of information is now, and has been a finance professor at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown for the last forty some years.

He says that: A clunker that travels 12,000 miles a year at 15 mpg uses 800 gallons of gas a year. A new vehicle that travels 12,000 miles a year at 25 mpg uses 480 gallons of gas a year.

So, the average Cash for Clunkers transaction reduced gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.

The government claims 700,000 clunkers were replaced so that is 224 million gallons saved per year. That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil. 5 million barrels is about 5 hours worth of US consumption. More importantly, 5 million barrels of oil at $90 per barrel costs about $450 million dollars. So, the government paid $3 billion of our tax dollars to save $450 million.

They spent $6.67 for every $1.00 they saved.

We've been assured, though, that they will do a much better job with our health care.

Now the question I have for CMS is:
How many people getting insurance off the exchanges are not getting any subsidies?

The error in this is the 18-26 year olds are covered under their parents policy. They were never going to be enrolled.

For the 27-34 year olds, if you are above the subsidy level, why would you go through the exchange? There are many plans out there without a $6,000 annual deductible, better copays and better coinsurance. My daughter fell into this group and was able to buy directly from a carrier not in the exchange, at a significantly lower cost with less out of pocket charges.

How is any family supposed to afford a $12,000 annual out of pocket?

@Factual Interjection: Horsepuckey.

Actual insurance need not cross-subsidize from one risk group to the next. Rather, the premiums paid by each insured are scaled to the expected cost to the insurer of covering a bet, e.g. "I bet I'm going to die". The insurer wants to win enough of the bets to make a profit, but not so many as to drive away potential customers to less rapacious bookmakers.

When this leads to e.g. ruinous life insurance for old people, it is often coupled with another investment alongside the pure bet. Young people pay extra while they're young so that they can still be insured while they are old. They accumulate capital value in their life insurance to accomplish this.

This pattern could work perfectly well for the bet "I bet I'm going to get sick".

@Fayd
"WHY DIDN'T THEY DO THE ALL-OUT PUSH SIX MONTHS AGO?
Because: 1. Some knew the website was garbage and 2. Had to spend all their time and political push saying how gov't is necessary/indispensable, because evil conservatives were saying shut it down.

This pattern could work perfectly well for the bet "I bet I'm going to get sick". -- phunctor at March 18, 2014 1:53 PM

Did you ever actually read the employer provided health insurance plans prior to the [un]AHA was put in place?

Most of them had a cap in them of had a lifetime family cap of $500K or $1M in them. Those were what they offered as the top line at employers. Then the lower plans had higher deductibles and lower caps.

I worked as a security guard for a while in the 90's. The company's health care plan had a $500 deductible and a cap per incident of $25K. I read that and said no way in hell to the $25 every two weeks on my barely above min wage income.

So the conversion to the [un]AHA now gets the government in between you and your healthcare providers, makes you and your employers have to report more information to the government.

It also says that you have a choice between bronze, silver, and gold plans and you as a single male have to pay for birth control and other stuff that is cheap now and will cut the caps lower for later treatments.

Sorry, but did you not on this very blog post a Wall Street Journal article claiming that the deadline has been extended for two years?

Sorry, but did you not on this very blog post a Wall Street Journal article claiming that the deadline has been extended for two years? -- Radwaste at March 18, 2014 8:02 PM

What I'd really like to see is where most major media such as ABC, NBC, CNS, and the NY Times have reported the change.

I watched NBC tonight and they were crowing about the 5M who have signed up. They didn't mention the supposed 50M uninsured or the number that no longer have a policy.

I can't buy a non-exchange plan in my market even if I buy directly from the insurer. We're trying. I got laid off in February and have insurance through the end of April so I have until 4/15 to submit signup paperwork for a new plan if I don't want a coverage gap. The direct plans are the same few on the exchanges and we can't cobble together our own preferences at all. The only company that allows that I don't want as I want to keep my kids' pediatrician and my own specialist who have seen me for the last 7 years for my clotting disorder and related. It's also the only one that covers my Lovenox affordably. It's either not covered at all so would cost me $1400 a month or it's covered at a percentage and would cost at least $800. We're looking at $1100 a month for health insurance and are required to buy dental insurance at a cost of at least $30 a month per child. And this is a no-deductible gold plan (still has the $6350 MOOP per person/$12,700 per family). The company we want (Kaiser) doesn't offer platinum level plans nor allow creating your own individual plans like they used to.

The cost of insurance is such that you're better off not buying it, and putting that money into a savings account to pay for your needs.

Voting for Obama was a free way to show that you're not one of those old racists who want to live in the past. Paying a lot of your money for something you don't think you need is something else entirely. Welcome to the free lunch you are paying for, kids.