Insurance agents are facing an uphill battle in getting young people insured.
High prices of health insurance are discouraging millennials from taking up policies, forcing them to adopt risky health care alternatives instead, a new survey reveals.
The latest Harris Poll found that one in five adults aged 18 to 36 cannot afford health care expenses, which have caused many millennials to be uninsured.
The survey polled 1,171 millennials and discovered that seven in 10 people from Generation Y consider cost to be a "very important" factor when looking for health care,
CNBC reported.
For 66% of millennials, monthly premium that costs nearly $200 is unaffordable; while others even think that $100 a month is already too high.
The lack of affordability, the survey said, is the most common reason as to why 16% of millennials – including 47% of those who are uninsured – are not planning to get health insurance in 2017.
"I would go a month or so where I had no health insurance, hoping nothing would happen," survey respondent Paul Yeager was quoted as saying in an online
CNBC report.
"When I knew I was [going to be] uninsured, I would stock up on my prescription by asking doctors to write me a longer script," Yeager added.
Like Yeager, many millennials resort to alternative means such as taking vitamins and supplements to address their health-care needs.
“That's how [millennials have] been coping currently," Hector De La Torre, executive director of the Transamerica Center for Health Studies, told
CNBC.
"Short of getting insurance, I don't see how that changes. It is going to be measuring the cost and benefits with limited budgets,” he said.
De La Torre said millennials often also disregard health care because of the common feeling that they are “young and invincible.”
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