July 03--Who will pay the most for the 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court to uphold the Affordable Care Act -- Obamacare -- because it is a "tax" and not a mandate to get insurance?

The young -- the very people who most enthusiastically supported the president.

Avik Roy, an advisor to Mitt Romney, pointed out in Forbes magazine that the assurances in 2010 by Jonathan Gruber, an economist at MIT, that the price of health insurance premiums would fall after passage of Obamacare have been refuted -- by Gruber himself.

"Before the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law, Gruber published a widely-cited analysis . . . in which he asserted that in 2016, young people would save 13 percent, and older people 31 percent, on their insurance premiums," Roy wrote.

"Gruber's numbers were used to rebut an October 2009 analysis from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which projected that non-group (a.k.a. individual-market) premiums would increase by 47 percent over the same period."

His numbers went a long way toward securing passage of the bill.

After the act passed, Gruber changed his tune.

"In Wisconsin, Gruber reported that people purchasing insurance for themselves on the individual market would see, on average, premium increases of 30 percent by 2016, relative to what would have happened in the absence of Obamacare," Roy said.

"In Minnesota, the law would increase premiums by 29 percent over the same period. Colorado was the least worst off, with premiums under the law rising by only 19 percent."

The people hit hardest will be the young.

"Obamacare forces insurers to charge their eldest beneficiaries no more than 3 times what they charge their youngest ones: a policy known as community rating," Roy wrote.

"This, despite the fact that these older beneficiaries typically have six times the health expenditures that younger people face. The net effect of this community rating provision is the redistribution of insurance costs from the old to the young."

The advocates of government-controlled health care were not honest about its true costs in 2009.

The young, among the most ardent supporters of Obama in 2008, are likely to remember that.

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