The world over has heard about the town hall brawls over President Barack Obama’s health care reform plans, but young Americans have been seemingly silent… or have they?

There’s this notion that young people don’t care about health care reform but the more than 880,000 Facebook status updates on Thursday that demanded health care reform tell a different story.

Young Americans experience the deficiencies of our health care system on a daily basis.

• In 2006, the number of uninsured young adults (19 to 29 year olds) climbed to 13.7 million people, accounting for about a third of the total uninsured population.
• Between 2001 & 2003 a staggering 62% of young adults between the ages of 19 and 23 went without coverage for some portion of time.
• Age 19 is a particularly vulnerable turning point because this is when many can no longer be covered on their parents’ insurance plans. While 11% of children age 18 and under are uninsured, this rate rises to 29% among those aged 19 to 29.

Young people showed how fired-up and engaged they are at the voting polls last November. A Rock the Vote Poll of 18 to 29-year olds during the 2008 election campaign period found that millennials regarded health care reform one of their top concerns. They have the most at stake in the debate considering how many are uninsured and underinsured. They also have the longest to live with the result so why have they been so silent?

The sideshows that have displayed partisan yelling and screaming is a clear turnoff to a population that voted overwhelmingly for less partisanship and drama in politics. Sadly, the Obama administration has done little to engage young people in the health care debate, although much of the White House’s plans will benefit the young. The reform bill proposes to:

• Provide protections against price gap discrepancies that often result in discrimination based on age and gender, and
• Enable young people to be covered under their parents’ plan until the age of 26 rather than the current limit of 19 for those who don’t attend college.

Although Obama hasn’t spoken directly to them about the current debate, young people are beginning to take action for themselves. Take Ari Matusiak, for example. The Georgetown Law student and several friends he met volunteering for Obama on the campaign trail recently founded Young Invincibles, a group dedicated to mobilizing a grass-roots health reform campaign among the nation’s 18-to-34-year-olds.

“The administration has a heavy lift,” said Matusiak, who is 32. “Young people need to be engaged, and we aren’t being engaged enough.”

Ari's not alone. Small town and college newspapers are reporting stories of young Americans planning their own town hall events and forums, designing health care t-shirts and sending petitions to their elected officials. How are you demanding real health care reform? We want to hear your stories!

Stay tuned for our soon-to-come new Health Care cause!