During a Tonight Show interview with host Jimmy Fallon, First Lady Michelle Obama touted ObamaCare as a cure-all for the health insurance needs of young people, who she described as “knuckleheads” who don’t know what is good for them.
What she failed to mention is that ObamaCare needs young people much more than they need it. In fact, the entire program could collapse without them. The sustainability of ObamaCare largely depends on the Administration’s ability to convince enough young and healthy people to enroll and subsidize an increasingly older, sicker population that is flooding the healthcare rolls.
The portion of the law that Michelle Obama notably bragged about on the Tonight Show allows young people under the age of 26 to stay on their parents’ insurance, regardless of their employment, marital, or student status.
“Well, thanks to the Affordable Care Act, young people can stay on their parents’ insurance until they are 26, but once they hit 26 — they’re on their own. And a lot young people think they’re invincible. But the truth is, young people are knuckleheads. They’re the ones who are cooking for the first time and slice their finger open, they’re dancing on the bar stool.”
While it is true that many young people haven’t yet had some of the life experiences of the generation before them, Michelle Obama’s comments underscore the pervasive liberal idea that we need government to take care of us, and that we would be lost without the nanny state.
Would young people really just be hopelessly lost “knuckleheads” without ObamaCare?
Here are just a few great Americans who prove just how wrong the First Lady’s description of young people in our country really is:
1.
Thomas Lynch Jr. and Edward Rutledge, were both 26 when they signed the Declaration of Independence
2.
Four delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were in their 20’s
4.
Facebook creator and CEO Mark Zuckerburg became a billionaire at age 23. His invention provided the platform through which many of you accessed this very website.
5.
Alabama native and Super Soaker inventor Lonnie G. Johnson began inventing while he was still a teenager, winning the state science fair, and going on to make incredible military and scientific advancements
5.
Olympic skier David Wise won a gold medal in the 2014 Sochi Olympics, while also balancing life with a wife and child
6.
Eric and Susan Gregg Koger, whose web-based boutique Modcloth had $100 million in revenue in 2012, was founded in 2003, while the duo was still in college.
Young people are entrepreneurs, not knuckleheads, Madam First Lady. If you want us to succeed, take away the expensive burdens that will follow us our whole lives, don’t further weigh us down with a program we don’t want, and largely don’t need. There’s a reason ObamaCare is having a tough time attracting young people, and I’m pretty sure degrading an entire generation isn’t going to help things along.
Elizabeth BeShears is the Executive Director of Alabama Citizens for Media Accountability, a non-profit watchdog group dedicated to exposing bias in the Alabama and national media. For more information and articles, visit MediaAccountability.org
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