Are We Being Pandered To?

Slate's Timothy Noah thinks so.

If you haven't been following the healthcare debate very closely lately (and really, who could blame you?), Max Baucus, the Democrat from Montana who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, recently released a version of the healthcare reform bill that is something of a compromise between Obama's vision and the Republicans'.  Like most compromises, it's gone over like a lead balloon, but it's probably pretty close to what the final thing will look like.  Noah writes:

One of the more annoying components to Sen. Max Baucus' just-released "chairman's mark" is its creation of a special category of private health insurance policy to be offered to a group known in insurance circles as "young invincibles." These are people 25 years or younger who don't understand what all this health care fuss is about because they are going to live forever and therefore have no use for doctors. One-third of them carry no health insurance, and they account for nearly one-third of the uninsured.

...

As Erika Lovley noted recently in Politico, President Obama's enthusiastic supporters among the young aren't particularly enthusiastic about health reform. It will, after all, require them to buy something they probably won't need. Baucus' young-invincibles option is a sop to them. By isolating invincibles from people far more likely to draw health benefits, Baucus guarantees they won't have to pay much in health premiums

Don't you feel special?

Unfortunately, this also means that when healthcare reform comes, and the individual mandate requires everyone to buy insurance, it will be much more expensive for the old folks, since us young, inexpensive folks won't be sharing their costs.

So, young people: Do we like this? They're obviously trolling for our votes with this bill.  They'll listen to us if we don't.

Stay informed.  Stay involved.

Senator Max Baucus
http://baucus.senate.gov/contact/emailForm.cfm?subj=issue

Senator Charles Grassley, IA (Ranking Republican on Baucus' committee).

http://grassley.senate.gov/contact.cfm


Senator Tom Harkin, IA
http://harkin.senate.gov/c/