If you believe the MSM Common Wisdom, Seniors' fears about Medicare is the most important issue driving the health reform debate. The media's focus on Seniors (and its exaggeration and distortion of their fears) obscures young peoples' very real stake in health insurance reform.
Nancy Pelosi seems to get it. She's agreed to include Pennsylvania lawmaker Kathy Dahlkemper's provision in the House bill that will extend coverage of young adults through their parents' plans through the age of 26.
"There is a clear and urgent need to provide health care to young adults," said Ms. Dahlkemper. "When they have emergencies, their care often comes at taxpayer expense or not at all."
It's not the perfect solution. (It may have an unintended consequence of dividing young voters, as children of wealthier, employed Americans will be covered, while children of unemployed or underemployed parents would need to look elsewhere for insurance or remain uninsured. Letting them buy into Medicare is a much better approach.)
But I'm glad to see someone is thinking about young voters' health needs. Common wisdom in electoral politics says the Senior vote trumps all others. Expect to hear that more often as boomers' retire.
The longer view, though, is that the so-called "Echo Boomers" (b. 1982-95) are a rising political and economic force.
Echo boomers are a reflection of the sweeping changes in American life over the past 20 years. They are the first to grow up with computers at home, in a 500-channel TV universe. They are multi-taskers with cell phones, music downloads, and Instant Messaging on the Internet. They are totally plugged- in citizens of a worldwide community.
And future voters currently 18-24 years old will reward the political party that gets it right for years to come. Let's not forget that this age group's increased voter turnout helped President Obama win in 2008:
Additionally, voters 18 to 24 were the only age group to show a statistically significant increase in turnout, reaching 49 percent in 2008 compared with 47 percent in 2004.
I know from experience with my own Gen-Y-ers, that younger Americans' sense of bravado--and the good health that tends to come along with youth--make this age group less likely to agitate about their lack of insurance.
In fact, they can be appallingly clueless about the need for health reform. And nobody is making an effort to engage them. Those still in college or living at home have not fully grasped the cruel connection between unemployment and no insurance, because until the economy went sour they, like the rest of us, could pretend that was a good system that worked for people.
When the economy was good, common wisdom said that lack of insurance was just a consequence of being unemployed, or underemploye. Want insurance? Get a job. Of course, that meant ignoring the reality of a strategic shift in retail, say, to part time (young) employees, deliberate union-busting to shear off benefited employees, and an outsourcing of many activities (to "consulting firms" or overseas) that had previously been the domain of union workers.
(Consulting in itself undermined the job/insurance standard, though. "Consulting firms" could (and did) hire and fire workers, deny benefits, and employ a vast, part-time, freelance workforce without benefits, having highly qualified laid-off professionals to choose from to build their ranks. But that's another story)
But now things are different. You can't tell uninsured people to get a job when there are no jobs. And more and more jobs are shrinking or cutting benefits. The job=insurance fantasy has come to an end.
Too many people are affected and the old lies don't work anymore. With unemployment stubbornly fixed at just under ten per cent--a figure that does not account for under-employment, part-time multi-employment (without benefits) and those who have given up on seeking work--a good proportion of Americans is one health disaster away from financial catastrophe. And young Americans, just starting their job search, with little experience to boast of, are at high risk.
Boomers and Echo Boomers can act together to correct the perception that younger and older voters are competing for scarce resources in the health care debate.
We all want to protect and improve Medicare. One surefire way to do that is to keep the public option closely tied to Medicare. And one way to do that is to show Seniors and Echo Boomers that they have a common cause in fighting for robust, inclusive, public health insurance.