Here's a snippet from my column in today's print edition of the AJC. The full column, about how the premiums on the Obamacare exchange starting next week will affect Georgians, is available to subscribers on MyAJC.com:

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Statistics tell us overwhelmingly that the surest path to avoiding poverty is to finish high school, wait until age 20 to get married, and only then have children. What does Obamacare do to this path?

Imagine Jason, a 22-year-old who makes $22,000 a year. His job doesn't offer insurance, but on the Obamacare exchange he can get a bronze plan for $566 a year, after subsidies.

Leigh Anne is a year younger, makes $18,000 and buys a bronze plan for $320 annually. Jason's been dating her for a couple of years, and he's thinking about proposing.

But first Jason checks the health exchange; he's heard there's some kind of "marriage penalty" for health insurance these days. And he's astonished to learn their combined health premium will be $2,003 a year more than they pay separately now.

It's like a 5 percent pay cut, with nothing in return. Maybe they get married anyway, and keep moving on the path away from poverty. Maybe not.

We can find people whose lives will get better immediately once the exchanges open. They are seen.

But these future people making future choices -- and history tells us they will be real -- are harder to identify and quantify. In many cases, the amount of help they get from the law will never surpass the larger opportunities at a better life they pass up. The missed opportunities and forgone advances are, as the French economist Bastiat described them, what is unseen.