Wisconsin: Sen. Candidate calls young adults lazy for taking advantage of ACA's healthcare provision

It's been a long, long time since I've written about the "Sub26ers"...that is, the population of Americans age 18 - 25 who are enrolled in the same healthcare policy as their parents thanks to the ACA's provision mandating that insurance carriers allow them to do so. While I may be missing a more recent article, the last time I recall writing anything in depth about this was nearly a decade ago:

Long-time readers will remember that throughout the 2014 Open Enrollment period, there was much fuss and bother made by both the Obama administration, the HHS Dept., myself and some ACA detractors over the "sub26er" population: Young adults aged from 19-25 years old who are covered by their parents policies thanks to provisions in the Affordable Care Act requiring all new policies issued since 2010 to allow this.

At the time I was a bit obsessed with trying to suss out just how many Americans fell into this particular category. It was a tricky number to pin down for a number of reasons, but in the end it seemed to hover somewhere in the 2 - 3 million range, depending on your source.

It's important to keep in mind that the ACA's "sub26er" rule doesn't just apply to ACA individual market policies; it also applies to employer-sponsored coverage. This makes it much more difficult to track just how many people are enrolled in policies specifically due to this ACA provision. There's another reason as well, but I'll come back to that in a moment.

The ACA's "Sub26er" rule is also among the laws most popular provisions. According to KFF's July 2019 tracking survey, 78% of Americans stated it was either "Very" or "Somewhat" important (other provisions ranked higher, but that's still a remarkably high score in our ultra-polarized nation).

I bring this up today because of a new story which was just broken by Heartland Signal:

In audio obtained by Heartland Signal, Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde was secretly recorded deriding the Obamacare policy which allows young adults to stay on their parents’ health care plan until they are 26.

The conversation was prompted by an unidentified voter at last week’s Outagamie County Fair who was concerned that the Affordable Care Act policy “makes them [young people] lazy.”

“It’s a stupid idea for this reason: All we’re doing is delaying younger people’s maturation,” Hovde responded. “And they need to grow up and move on and stand on their own two feet. And by the way, your lowest health care costs are when you’re 21 to 26.

...“I think we have never had such a large percentage of working-age Americans that are sitting on the couch and not involved,”

Note: Technically it wasn't Hovde who used the word "lazy," but he certainly didn't contradict the voter, and "stand on their own two feet" and "sitting on the couch" are about as close as you can get to "lazy" without using that specific word.

Well, now. There's a lot to unpack here.

Setting aside him just issuing a blanket insult of Gen Z voters, it's also important to keep in mind that the "sub26er"provision of the ACA has been the law of the land for nearly 14 years (it actually went into effect almost immediately after President Obama signed the bill, years before the ACA exchanges or Medicaid expansion went into effect).

That means that many of the millions of Americans who've taken advantage of the Young Adult rule are now pushing 40. Mr. Hovde just told all of them that they're lazy as well.

Secondly, I'm not sure I understand the relevance of the last part of his comment--yes, healthcare costs are lower when you're younger. So what? That just means that it's beneficial to both the insurance industry (healthier risk pool) and the parents (peace of mind without breaking the bank). It's really no different than AT&T or Verizon offering a "Families & Friends" plan...are young people "lazy" if they share their parents data plan as well? To Mr. Hovde, I suppose they are.

Third, while he doesn't state so outright, he seems to be under the impression that the adult children have to live at home with their parents in order to be enrolled in their plan, which is just silly. 

He also seems to be implying that the ACA requires parents to keep their adult children on their plan, which isn't the case at all--they don't have to do so, the insurer just has to allow them to if they want to. And if the kid wants to be more independent & get their own coverage, they can do so as well!

There's one more thing that Mr. Hovde probably wasn't aware of which makes this comment even more bemusing: The ACA's "sub26er" provision wasn't conjured up out of nowhere. In fact...

...prior to the ACA being signed into law, 35 states already had such laws on the books...however, almost all of them required the adult children to be single, 4 states required them not to have any children, and 8 states required that they be students.

Finally, the cut-off age is all over the place, ranging from as low as 22 in South Carolina to as high as 30 in Nebraska and Pennsylvania.

That's right: 2/3 of the states, including lazy, couch-potato "woke"-infested liberal hellscapes like South Carolina and Nebraska, already had pretty much the same law on the books long before Obamacare poisoned the land. (that's sarcasm, natch)

Oh yeah...and guess which other state is on that list?

Wisconsin

Wis. Stat. § 632.885 requires that coverage for unmarried dependents through a parent's insurance be offered up to age 27 if they are not offered insurance through an employer. Full-time students called to active duty in the armed forces can be covered beyond age 26 depending on various factors.

Suck it up & get off the couch, you lazy troops!