'Young Invincibles' Need Insurance, Cartwright Says

Many of the people who came to hear U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright speak on the Affordable Care Act Monday afternoon in Wilson were over 50.

And he had a message for them to take back to the younger people in their lives: get them to get health insurance.

“Everybody here knows someone who’s young and who doesn’t have insurance," Cartwright told the audience at the Wilson Community Center. “Yeah, they’re young and healthy. But they’re also most likely to go off and have catastrophic accidents.”

And with those accidents could come uninsured ER visits by what Cartwright called "the young invincibles," which he connected to the closings of two hospitals in his district.

Cartwright, D-17, spent about 90 minutes discussing the Affordable Care Act, and taking questions from the audience. He was joined by Jim Palmquist of the AARP and Athena Ford, Advocacy Director for the Pennsylvania Health Access Network.

Topics ranged from whether Cartwright had read the bill before voting on it (He didn't, because he was elected after the vote) and the penalty for not having insurance ($95 a year, or 1 percent of your income, whichever is higher).

One audience member—questions were read off by moderator and Wilson Mayor Dave Perruso—asked how the act could help seniors with prescription drug costs.

Ford said that the ACA closes the so-called "doughnut hole," which refers to the limit Medicare puts on some drugs after users cross a certain dollar threshold.

"That’s where we hear the horror stories of seniors ripping pills in half, choosing between food and medicine," Ford said.

Obama's healthcare law closes the hole, but it will take until 2020 for it to go into effect. Until then, the hole will shrink every year from 2014 on, Ford said.

Cartwright acknowledged that there are problems with the health care law, saying that the kinks in the government website are "unacceptable" and that the Obama administration could have been more forthcoming on some matters.

Still, he said it's important legislation, even if it's still a work in progress.

"I believe that for the entirety of my political career, however long that lasts,  we’re going to be tinkering with this," he said.