Federal Health Care Reform Not Headed for Death Spiral

According to experts at the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), the federal Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare, is likely not headed for an actuarial death spiral, as some have predicted.  The Washington Post reports that KFF’s new brief analyzes what would happen if young adults (those under 35) do not enroll in health insurance as required by federal law.  The worry is that if not enough young, healthy people sign up for coverage, premiums will increase as the insurance plans face claims of older, sicker enrollees.  As a result, the market will become unstable as fewer and fewer people can afford coverage.  But KFF experts say that even if young adults sign up at half the rate the administration anticipates, premiums would go up by only a few percentage points, which would not be enough to trigger a death spiral.