Even though he has run his last race, the president needs the 18-to-34 age group to make his signature Obamacare policy work. Without them, the whole system falls apart — not tomorrow, today, right now, before the radical reform of U.S. health care can even get off the ground.
Just how bad is it? Just 24 percent of the new enrollees to Obamacare are between 18 and 34. The entire plan was predicated on a sign-up rate of nearly 40 percent, the idea being that healthy young people will pay more — much more — than they once did to offset the unhealthy elderly signing up for Obamacare.
In some states, the sign-up rate for millennials is abysmal: Arizona and West Virginia saw just 17 percent of the age group enroll. The White House, of course, predicts that number will grow as the deadline to sign up nears at the end of March (if you’ve got a millennial kid, you know they only do things at the last minute).
But the situation is far worse than just flagging enrollment of Obamacare, and the president knows it. Young people, who turned out in droves in 2008 and put the first-term Illinois senator in the White House, have grown increasingly disillusioned, seeing him now as just another politician who makes promises he has no intention of keeping.
Just 41 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds approve of the job Mr. Obama is doing — down 11 points from April — and 54 percent now disapprove, a Harvard poll found. A whopping 57 percent disapprove of Obamacare (just 38 percent approve). Worse, 40 percent say health care will get worse (18 percent think it will improve) and 51 percent think costs will rise (34 percent say costs will stay the same; just 11 percent think costs will decrease).
Much, much worse: 54 percent of 18-24-year-olds say they would vote to “recall and replace” the president — in Washington, that’s called “impeachment.”
