The shackles of job lock for young Americans are coming undone, according to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who said the Affordable Care Act “liberates” Millennials to do “what you want to do in your life.”
Clinton spoke before a crowd of more than 6,000 students, faculty and visitors to the University of Miami at the school’s Coral Gables, Fla., campus Wednesday. The latest in a series of speeches she is giving across the country, Clinton expressed why the Affordable Care Act is beneficial to Millennials.
“Having access to health insurance, not connected to employment, subsidized as it is under the Affordable Care Act, liberates you to choose what you want to do in your life,” she said, according to the Associated Press.
Clinton, who many speculate will run for president in 2016, touted the benefits of Obamacare and said that while the majority of young people will avoid a major medical emergency in their 20s, there is a small percentage who will not.
She encouraged the young attendees to enroll in the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges in the event they fall into the latter category.
“On a very personal self-interested basis, you should have health insurance to protect yourself and your families from unpredictable costs that none of us know will be striking whenever,” Clinton said. “You can’t sit here today and tell me for sure you won’t have a car accident, you won’t have a slip or a fall, you won’t have some kind of disease that you never thought you’d ever be stricken by.”
Since the Congressional Budget Office reported a decline of 2 million workers by 2017 because of Obamacare, Democrats have asserted that such a decrease rids Americans of job-lock. Republicans, to the contrary, fear the law creates a disincentive to work and could lead to less jobs.
Clinton, however, argued young Americans will be freed from taking jobs solely for health insurance.
“You don’t have to take a job, as so many people in my generation did, just to have health insurance,” she said. “I know so many friends from literally high school, college, who stayed in jobs for decades because they had a spouse with a preexisting condition and they couldn’t afford to lose the job they had. You will be liberated from that.”
Clinton was joined onstage by former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, who served in her husband’s administration. Now the president of the University of Miami, Shalala and Clinton joined forces in the early 1990s to tackle healthcare reform.
With a little more than a month until Obamacare’s open enrollment period ends, the White House has begun a significant push to sign Millennials up for the law. The Obama administration set a goal of 7 million enrollees by March 31, however, the Department of Health and Human Services reported only 3.3 million had signed up through the end of January.
Only 25 percent of those who enrolled are between the ages of 18 and 34.
