UCLA report predicts many Californians will remain uninsured without mandate in Affordable Care Act

College students and recent graduates could potentially be affected by an upcoming Supreme Court review of the Affordable Care Act, based on the question of whether or not the government can legally require all U.S. citizens to buy health insurance.

The law includes a requirement, which lawmakers call the individual mandate, for all citizens to buy health insurance. Without it, many Californians will not purchase health insurance and will remain uninsured, according to a report released last month by UCLA professors and researchers.

This could affect college students and recent graduates because a large number of them graduate and do not buy health insurance, said Allison Hoffman, a professor at the UCLA School of Law who specializes in health care law and policy.

The main question up for legal debate is whether Congress can legally force all U.S. citizens to buy health insurance. The UCLA report projects that the mandate would translate to a 40 percent increase in insured Californians if it becomes law.

But even with the law in place, many people will opt to pay a fine of about $695 per person or $2,085 per family instead of buying insurance, said Gerald Kominski, one of the authors of the report and director of the UCLA Department of Health Services.

Reasons for not buying health insurance include religious objections, disagreement with the law or an inability to afford it, Kominski said.

The report projects almost 3 million Californians will remain uninsured under the mandate and will instead choose to pay the penalty. It is at the state’s expense if they are injured or become ill, he said.

People who choose to remain uninsured are generally the young and healthy, including students and college graduates, Hoffman said.

If a larger number of unhealthy and elderly people, who require more medical attention, are buying insurance than those who are younger and healthier, prices for insurance will go up, she said.

The health care law is used to balance the picture because there will be more people paying into the plan, leaving more money for the plan to be implemented, said Dylan Roby, one of the authors of the report and a UCLA professor of health services.

There is also a possibility that the Supreme Court will rule that the government can’t require people to buy health insurance, but other parts of the health care law can still be approved by the states, Kominski said.

According to the report, if the mandate is taken out of the health care plan and people are not required to buy insurance, nearly 1 million people would still likely purchase insurance because of its increased affordability, but almost 4 million would remain uninsured.

The UCLA report does not take into consideration the number of undocumented people in California, because undocumented immigrants cannot be forced to buy health insurance under the individual mandate.

Under the new health care act, subsidies will be available to people who cannot afford to pay the premiums on their insurance. This money will not be available to undocumented immigrants, Roby said.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments for the individual mandate and the rest of the healthcare law in March, and its ruling will be released sometime in the fall before the general election, Kominski said.

Though the Obama administration appears confident the measure will pass, it is certain to be a key political issue during the election, he added.