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TechnoratiWhere Are the Young Voices on Health Care?
As Congress returns to Capitol Hill, back from a recess of contentious town halls on health care reform, one new voice has the potential to break through the seemingly endless deadlock: the voice of young Americans.
Just Thursday, there were more than 880,000 Facebook status updates posted with the meme of a demand for health care reform, generated organically and spread virally from young people and other Facebook users across the country.
Some are regarding this as the first symbolic demonstration of young people's engagement in the debate despite the common, and categorically false, notion that young people "don't care about health care reform."
Young adults between the ages of 19 and 29 represent nearly a third of the entire uninsured population, and two-thirds of those uninsured young people reported going without necessary medical care because of costs in 2007, according to research for the Commonwealth Fund.
More than half of all young adults have low incomes (below 200 percent of the federal poverty level, $21,660 for a single person in 2009), and low-income young adults are more than 2.5 times as likely to be uninsured as higher-income young adults, according to the Urban Institute.
And contrary to popular belief that young people
see themselves as invincible college students who choose to remain
uninsured, 56 percent of uninsured young adults between the ages of 19
and 29 are full-time workers who are half as likely to be covered by
their employer as older workers.
Millennials regarded health care reform as one of their top concerns
during the 2008 election campaign, according to the Rock the Vote Poll
of 18- to 29-year-olds, conducted in February 2008 by Lake Research
Partners.
Whether it is the 25-year-old freelancer with a pre-existing condition who can't purchase insurance in the individual market, the 20-year-old line cook who doesn't receive insurance through her job or the 28-year-old bank employee who is insured but is worried about the rising costs of premiums, young Americans experience the deficiencies of our health care system on a daily basis.
Nevertheless, despite a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey showing that 60 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 support Obama's reform plan, the voice of young Americans has been strikingly absent from the public, televised national debate. And that silence is a dangerous state of affairs for the larger dialogue around reform.
Young Americans have the most at stake and the longest to live with the result, and they are often the primary voice of a moral imperative (the idea that health care reform is not only economically necessary but the just and fair thing to do). Without their voices, the health care reform debate will continue to be stalled and hemmed in by older Americans who are in a better economic position than young people and who are afraid to change the status quo, despite all signs that it is rapidly failing.
Young people were such a vital force during the election, not simply because of their own voting turnout but because of their ability to reach out to their elders and persuade them. And what could be more needed now?
But if health care reform matters so much to young people and their voice is so crucial in the debate, why the silence? Why does it appear as if young people aren't interested in the debate that will inform so much of their future?
Well, if we are gauging America's overall interest in the debate by the aforementioned displays of partisan yelling, screaming and death panel-ing at some town halls, no wonder we think young people don't care. Those sideshows were a clear turnoff to a population that voted overwhelming for less partisanship and "drama" in its politics.
Or perhaps it is because this administration did little in the early stages of the debate to engage and activate a "fired-up and ready to go" base of young people that saw health care reform as a top concern at the polls. Obama rarely highlights the fact that reform would provide protections against price differentials that often result in discrimination based on age and gender.
Or what about the fact that the president's reform proposal would mean that a young person can be covered up until the age of 26 by a parent's plan, rather than the current limit of 19 for those who don't attend college? This is what young people should have been told.
But it isn't too late.
As 2008 showed, young people, like all other constituencies, speak when spoken to. As the debate slogs into what is sure to be the most consequential stage of the battle, President Obama has a prime opportunity to speak directly to those who should have been the base of this issue all along.
It is beyond time for the White House, and other organizers working to support reform, to hit college campuses and other community centers where young people can be found, both on- and offline, and empower them to make their voices heard.
In the meantime, young people are doing it themselves. Students across the country are beginning to plan their own town hall events and forums, designing health care T-shirts and sending in photo petitions to their elected officials. They are demanding real reform and trying to get the health care debate back on track. In order to succeed, the fight for bold health care reform needs the enthusiasm, support and perspective of young people. And time is running out.
11 Comments so far
Show AllI think a lot of young people are going to regret not being involved when the government "mandates" (e.g. forces) them to buy expensive private insurance and they will simply go from being uninsured to underinsured.
In my experience, some (not all) insurance plans marketed to young adults are just accident plans for which you pay a sizeable amount for not being able to see a doctor at all. Many of these plans won't cover costs related to sexual health (gyno visits, HPV vaccine) that young people actually need so you sometimes end up paying for insurance and then paying for your actual healthcare (at Planned Parenthood or elsewhere). Although I do think it is a good idea for young adults to have at least accident insurance, I think young people will become really disillusioned with reform if suddenly they are forced to pay for insurance but still can't get healthcare. Just my opinion...
Also, importantly, I think young people feel they (in part) swept Obama to office on their wave of enthusiasm and activism. They aren't paying close attention because they think they can trust Obama; he's their hero. They expect him to change things. Plus, previous activism was orchestrated by the campaign, but the campaign is over and the OFA can't substitute for a movement. Facebook status updates are not going to cut it no matter how well-intentioned. Don't blame the young people...blame the Democratic politicians who took advantage of their idealism to get elected and are now falling far short of delivering change.
Hey, Erica!
RIGHT HERE!
I'm getting sick of all these "where are all the young people" articles and comments. I'm here. RIGHT HERE. I vote, I go to town hall meetings, I volunteer at non-profits, I call my congressman and senators, I go to city council meetings. I write letters to the editor.
And I get ignored.
At a recent town hall meeting, there were some people from my generation, but not many. Maybe 10% of the whole crowd. My congressmen ignored us and favoured the seniors. Happy with their medicare but unwilling to share.
It's very much like the whole Republican/Democrat, red state/blue state bullshit. Two simple, generalist categories into which all must fit to be "represented" while ignoring all other major groups with valid (just not the "right" arguments/reforms).
WE don't choose who gets heard, the ones with the microphone/camera/magic pen do. But we can choose to get angry, we can choose to be disruptive, we can choose to be SEEN, because that is what the invisible must do.
Herbalist,
Don't ya know they gotta blame the victim,the disenfranchised, the ignored, the shunned, whether young or old, educated or ignorant, healthy or sick, employed or unemployed? I do the same things you do, most fellow citizens are responsive, mostly positive. But I can't buy the TV/Media/legalized bribery(my apologies Ms. Pelosi,lobbying) megaphone, so to this type of commentator/apologist, it is like the tree falling in the forest where no one is standing.
The one negative comment I garnered to my most recent local editorial, in which I presented reasons extending medicare to all would in fact most advantage the seniors and in which I asked "why not extend to us, the rest of the general population, what you, the seniors enjoy?" castigated me as a liberal, unionized (I WISH), free loader who didn't deserve healthcare, and why do the elderly always have to pay for the needs of the young in their onerous property taxes, even when the seniors received no COLA from SS this year." The last phrase the anonymous letter mailer from my zip code posed was 'Where's mine?" It had all of Rush's talking points, and in no way responded to what I addressed in the editorial. I wanted to take the bands pa system through the street and say," where's yours? it's already here. that was my point." I decided I really needed to keep praying for this frightened rabbit of a neighbor, because most people here know they can approach me with problems of various sorts and I'll engage with them at whatever problem solving level or approach they wish, always discreetly and not discussed if that is what they wish.
Erica Williams and all you Campus Progress types: Why don't you lighten up on young voters whose "voices" are not being heard? Of course their voices are being heard. It's college football season, for God's sake, and don't you hear all those young voices shouting: go Gators or Dawgs or Fighting Illini---or whatever? Sure, they had an exciting season of shouting O-bama, O-bama as they were helping to "make history," but history has been made already, the first black is in the White House, so let us be kids again until you need our votes again and we'll be back full voiced. If Campus Progress had really been interested in keeping young voters mobilized, they would have taken a forthright stand for single payer health care and used their voices to demand that Obama hear and respond to their voices. But to sit back and let the President make deals and triangulations to dilute a "reform plan" into an industry-friendly scam, then call for their "voices" to demand Congress get behind the Obama plan that their voices had no role in framing (they weren't in on those "deals")? Well all I can say is "leave those kids alone," don't scapegoat them for the stupidity of an American electorate that elected an empty suit for a President.
As a young person, I could make the point that many young people either don't care about healthcare, or support the current system because they've grown up being presented with only one way to go about it: the "free-market" way. Media and schools (even universities) present neoliberal, Friedmanesque economics and the resulting greed, selfishness, and hyperindividualism as the All-American way.
From what I've noticed, this leads to kids being either desensitised to the suffering and plight of others (because, why should they care? anyone who lacks healthcare or money deserves it), or supporting the insurance industry, because the free-market way is the only way. Anyone who actually wants to learn about things like economics, civic responsibility, etc. has to find & learn it themselves, meaning that very few will, especially considering their lifelong indoctrination by the media and the education system.
Nobody wants to help anybody because that would mean less money for themselves, especially after all of them become wealthy!
As a sidenote, another contributing factor to young people's healthcare apathy might be the fact that many of them do not have to worry about health insurance because most are able to stay on their parent's insurance until they are around 21-23.
I would go even farther and say that most young people have grown up with the whole "don't fight for what you want, but take what they give you" mentality.
Young people don't know fighting for single payer is even an option. They don't care, and don't want to make the effort. They'll just go along with what they're given.
As the article mentions, young people will be around longer than older people. They will see more of the results of our lack of care for the earth.
Possibly young people see the issue of "health" in a different way, a larger and longer term way. They seem very concerned about the environment, toxins in the ocean and air, global warming, food and water sources. They may see "health" in having a healthy biosphere, whereas older people are more tuned in to medical care.
If I had to choose, though, I would probably favor caring for the biosphere, since it impacts all humans and all other animal and plant species. And yet, if you have ONE sick loved one who needs care... then that means the world to you. Both are very important. And I think that young people understand both. Just since they don't have too much money, nobody listens to them. But they do have brains, mouths, votes, twitters, cell phones and Facebook accounts.
We don't have to choose. The sensible and nurturing nature requires attention both to individuals through universal medical care and to everyone through ecological responsibility.
Joe
In the long run young people will see more of the results of Obama's NO INSURER LEFT BEHIND, NO PATIENT LEFT A DIME bill.
In the short run they will be even more impacted by loss of job opportunity.
To wit:
The current broken US health care system causes millions of boomers age 50-64 to delay retirement 5, 10, 15 or more years solely for the purpose of keeping their employer-provided medical insurance, resulting in millions of good jobs that are not available to young Americans.
Lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to age 50 would result in all of these workers retiring, immediately opening millions of jobs for young Americans.
On the contrary , Obamacare prioritizes insurance company profits and the existing employer-based medical insurance system. More boomers will delay retirement and millions more jobs will not be available to young Americans.
Perhaps when you're young and healthy--feeling almost indestructible--health care is not a major concern.
Yup.