The Obama administration has released figures on total health care enrollment through April 19 (the extended deadline), showing that 28 percent of all state and federal enrollees fell into the premium-lowering 18-to-34-year-old demographic.
Original hopes were for a 40 percent enrollment of "young invincibles" in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces, but administration officials expressed satisfaction with the overall results. Enrollment of the young and healthy was built into the calculations to offset the older and more medically needy generations.
"We believe, based on the data that we've seen and the independent data that is out there, that premiums will be stable and that the risk pool is sufficiently large and varied to support that kind of pricing," said Michael Hash, a top official overseeing the health law's implementation at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
There has been widespread speculation among health insurance analysts that an enrollment of less than 40 percent would lead to a) further expenditures by the federal government to subsidize the insurance companies and b) a precipitous rise in health insurance premiums for next year.
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