Millennials Are Buying Beer Instead of Health Insurance, CEO Claims

If you get your health insurance through Obamacare, you probably already know this—if not, sorry for the bad news!—but this past week, it was announced that the monthly premium for mid-tier plans will increase by 25 percent on average for the coming year. This means that healthy 27-year-olds will now pay more than $300 per month for benchmark plans, and even though there are plenty of tax subsidies out there to make the burden lighter for some people, it can get far worse than that.

Given the huge deductibles these plans carry, many people will have to shell out the better part of ten grand before their insurance really kicks it. But not that that really matters—according to the CEO of one major insurance company, most young people would rather blow their dough on booze than spend it on their health, anyway.

Young people are supposed to keep the Affordable Care Act running. The way the whole thing works requires healthy young people to pay into the system in order to help offset the health care expenses of sicker, older people. Tax penalties of up to $700 are supposed to deter healthy young people from skipping out on participating, but that's nothing compared to the monthly premiums. According to the CEO of Aetna, one of the nation's largest health insurers, young people are putting their meager but hard-earned dollars toward more important things instead… like alcohol.

"Young people can do the math," Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said at a New York conference hosted by Bloomberg this week. "Gas for the car, beer on Fridays and Saturdays, health insurance."

When young people don't pay in, premiums rise to cover the cost of caring for older patients. Eventually, as has been the case in many parts of the country, insurers stop offering plans through Obamacare as the burden of providing coverage to patients who use their insurance a lot becomes too great. Earlier this year, Aetna stopped offering Obamacare coverage in 70 percent of the counties where it had previously provided Affordable Care Act plans.

But halfway through that first Friday night sixer, the complexities of the health insurance market are a world away. And sure: Someday, young people will need to receive costly medical care. But making sure the health care insurance market works in the future is someone else's problem.

And, if anyone asks, don't they know hops are, like, pretty good for you?