A bad deal in store for America's young adults.

• Position: ObamaCare

One of the most interesting questions about the health care overhaul now moving through Congress is how it will affect young adults, posits Aaron Yelowitz, associate professor of economics at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, Washington, D.C., where he wrote a briefing paper on the subject.

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That legislation will force most, or all, Americans to purchase health insurance (an "individual mandate") and impose price controls on health insurance ("community rating") that will limit insurers' ability to offer less-expensive premiums to low-risk enrollees. Those provisions would drive rates down for 55-year-olds but force them up for 25-year-olds--who then implicitly are subsidizing older adults. According to the Urban Institute, many young people could see their premiums double, whereas those for older adults could be cut in half.

Massachusetts, meanwhile, benefits from another type of subsidy that props up its regime of insurance mandates and price controls: large subsidies from the Federal government. In contrast, the U.S. as a whole has no external party it can exploit to subsidize a nationwide Massachusetts-style health care overhaul--unless Congress finances it through additional deficit spending, which really is just another way of taxing the young to subsidize the old, Yelowitz points out.

The irony, he indicates, is that Barack Obama captured the presidency with 66% of the vote among adults aged 18 to 29. That is a larger share than any presidential candidate has achieved in decades. Yet, his health care system could impose its greatest burdens on young adults, who are more likely to be uninsured than either children or older individuals. Related to that fact, young adults tend to need less medical care than older people. Since the emerging health bill will make insurance compulsory for U.S. residents and limit the ability of insurance companies to offer discounts to low-risk enrollees, the legislation may force younger persons to purchase health insurance at premiums higher than those they already have rejected.

At the same time, the legislation will create new taxpayer subsidies to help low-income residents afford coverage. Since young adults also tend to have lower incomes than their elders, they may be eligible for those benefits.

The percentage of people who are uninsured starts an acute upward climb as children transition into adulthood. Much of that increase...