This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 9, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

How Will Obamacare affect young adults?

Provisions in leading bills would require young people to buy insurance

while simultaneously preventing

insurers from offering low-cost insurance to people who are less expensive to insure, namely

young adults.

In other words, young adults will have to pay above market prices for insurance.

Aaron Yellowitz is an associate professor of economics at the University of Kentucky

and author of the new Cato paper, a bad deal for young adults we spoke

Friday. How affordable is insurance for people in their 20s we're talking about

remaking a system in the name of 46 million people who do not have

insurance. How affordable is insurance for people in their 20s generally?

For people in their 20s, insurance is affordable in some states and not in other states.

In some states, there are plenty of state regulations that make

uninsh, that make insurance, that make buying insurance quite unaffordable for young individuals.

For example, in New York State, essentially insurance is priced as if everyone who's buying it is like a 55 year old and so many 25 year olds will find that to be a bad deal.

For example, if you go on to E health insurance, the typical policy that you would buy in New York State

is around $400 a month, which would gobble up a fair share of an individual's income,

a young individual's income.

In contrast, in California, you could buy a policy for around one-third the price of that in New York,

so it's quite a bit more affordable.

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