There is a current running through the ObamaCare debate that goes something like this:
Every other advanced country provides health insurance to all its citizens for a fraction of what Americans spend on health care. ObamaCare emulates what those countries do. Anyone who complains about ObamaCare increasing premiums or imposing other costs is therefore a right-wing nut who doesn’t understand that universal coverage results in lower spending, not higher spending.
This line of reasoning, so to speak, leads supporters to believe ObamaCare is a free lunch. Their ignorance is not accidental. MIT health economist and ObamaCare architect Jonathan Gruber helpfully explained some years ago that he and his co-architects deliberately designed the law to hide its costs and make the benefits seem like a free lunch.
ObamaCare’s “Millennial mandate”—the requirement that employers who offer health coverage for employees’ dependents continue to offer such coverage until the dependents turn 26 years old—is one of those supposed free lunches. This mandate’s benefits unquestionably come at a cost. Expanding health insurance coverage among adults age 19–26 leads them to consume more medical care. When those people file insurance claims, health-insurance premiums rise. Yet ObamaCare does an amazing job of hiding those costs from voters.
Does ObamaCare impose a special tax that the IRS collects to pay for that extra coverage? No. That would be far too transparent. The cost just gets added to your premiums.
Does ObamaCare require employers to include a line-item on your premium payments, to show you how much this additional coverage is costing you? Absolutely not. That, too, would make the costs dangerously noticeable. The additional cost just gets thrown onto the pile, hidden among the costs of all the other mandated coverage you don’t want, and the coverage you actually do want.
Maybe workers see their premiums rising, and are merely ignorant of the fact that the Millennial mandate is part of the reason? Nope. ObamaCare hides the cost further still. Explaining how requires a little bit of labor economics.