One outstanding question for Obamacare had been whether more young adults would sign up ahead of the March 31 deadline. Some early returns, according to an analysis by the Washington Post, suggest that they did.
The Post gathered data from six state-run insurance marketplaces and found that each of them experienced an increase from February to March in the share of enrollees who were young adults ages 18 to 34. In Rhode Island, for example, the share of young adults rose from 26 percent in February to 28.5 percent in March. Similar increases occurred in California, Colorado, Kentucky, Minnesota and Washington, D.C.
Call it the ‘Between Two Ferns’ Bounce. http://t.co/f0dnwe1A13 from @JasonMillman pic.twitter.com/deMcKBCAdf
— Jake Grovum (@jgrovum) April 4, 2014
Even with the increase, young adults are still less than the nearly 40 percent of enrollees that the Obama administration had said that it was aiming for, but it is an improvement from earlier in the enrollment period. And independents analysts have said that the current sign-up rate among young adults, about 25 percent of all enrollees nationwide as of the end of February, should be enough to avoid any kind of premium-driven death spiral.
