I just read “Millennials Feel Most Confident About Insurance Benefit Decisions Yet May Be The Most Under-insured Generation.” The premise of the article is that while only 64% of Baby Boomers feel confident about their abilities to make appropriate insurance decisions, 96% of those born between 1980 and 2000 feel confident about their abilities.
A “Millennial” is a person who is 12-32 years old. I remember when I was a young adult. As far as I was concerned, I was both immortal and invincible. Nothing could harm me. There was not reason for me to waste money on insurance.
About the time my first son, who ironically is a Millennial, was born, I realized that I was not immortal or invincible. My wife and I had no health insurance for a few months. It was a scary time.
When I was 29 I had my first kidney stone. As I lay helpless on a bed in the Emergency Room, I realized just how unreliable my body is.
A couple of months later, the bills from the doctors and hospital arrived at the house. All I can say is “Thank heavens we had good health insurance then.”
A few years later I was working in San Antonio, Texas. Unfortunately, the Office Manager had made a mistake and I went uninsured for one month. It was during that month that I had my second kidney stone attack. Because I had no insurance at that time, the doctors only did the minimum that was required by law to help me. It was a painful learning experience for me. Since that experience, we have always had good health insurance.
It does not surprise me that Millennials have the utmost confidence in their ability to choose good insurance. I see a few reasons why they would feel that way.
HOW THEY WERE RAISED
Millennials were raised differently from Baby Boomers. When I was a kid, my fanny was always sitting on my bicycle seat. I was always riding either to a friend’s house or to the park to meet up with friends.
My son was different. When he was a kid, if he were not in school, his fanny was sitting on his computer chair.
WHAT THEY EXPERIENCED
When the medical bills their parents and their parent’s health insurance paid all their medical bills for them. They had no idea how much a visit to the doctor actually cost.
Now that they are on their own, they have to learn how expensive medicine really is. If the only interaction they have with a doctor is for the “flu” during the winter, they will probably not see any logical reason to pay for good major medical and supplemental insurance.
As they get older and see more people struggling with medical bills for appendectomies, kidney stones, etc. they will get a better idea of their need to have adequate insurance help to pay for unanticipated medical bills. Tthey will see how expensive it can be to treat cancer, heart attack or stroke. When they experience those costs, they will understand why their parents were so concerned about medical bills.
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