Knowing that it must boost enrollment for Obamacare, the White House is hosting a summit Tuesday to reach out to millennials.
The summit will include local and state leaders as well as youth advocacy groups and tech companies, according to the White House. High-ranking administration officials such as Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell are expected to attend and discuss the best ways to get millennials to buy in to Obamacare.
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The summit is part of the outreach planned by the Obama administration for the upcoming open enrollment for the Affordable Care Act, which has been beset by high-profile defections of insurers and sharp increases in premiums.
The administration is hoping that signing up younger, healthier people will improve the risk pools for Obamacare and balance out the sicker-than-expected patient population.
The percentage of uninsured millennials has dropped since 2013, with the percentage at 21 percent in July 2014 and down to 11 percent in April 2016, according to federal data.
However, millennials ages 18-34 represent the vast majority of the remaining uninsured, with 38 percent of total uninsured people, according to an analysis from the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
A major reason why millennials haven’t been signing up is they aren’t afraid of the individual mandate’s penalty for not having insurance. The idea behind the penalty was it would get people to sign up for Obamacare to avoid paying the government for not having insurance.
However, some experts have said that the penalty isn’t big enough to warrant buying more expensive coverage through Obamacare.
In 2014, nearly 8 million people paid the fee, which was $95 that year. The fee for not having coverage in 2017 will be $695.
“About 45 percent of taxpayers paying a penalty or claiming an exemption were under age 35, compared to about 30 percent of all taxpayers in 2014,” according to a CMS memo on millennial outreach.
So the administration is planning to reach out to people who paid the fee or received an exemption for 2015.
“We will incorporate targeted messages that reflect their recent experience,” said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which supervises Obamacare.
The foundation noted that the best way to get more uninsured people to sign up is to expand the financial assistance provided by Obamacare to blunt some of the costs.
“Increasing financial assistance through expanded eligibility for cost-sharing reductions and improved premium tax credits could reduce financial burdens sufficiently to increase enrollment in nongroup insurance,” the March analysis said.
However, that would require an act of the Republican-controlled Congress.
The foundation said that under the current law, expanding coverage among the remaining uninsured should be tempered until financial assistance can be expanded.
