Options to expand health insurance enrollment in the individual market
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Author(s):
- Eibner, Christine, author Liu, Jodi, author
- Contributor(s):
- Commonwealth Fund, issuing body.
- Publication:
- [New York, N.Y.] : Commonwealth Fund, October 2017
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Health Insurance Exchanges -- economics Health Insurance Exchanges -- statistics & numerical data Income Tax Insurance Coverage -- economics Insurance Coverage -- statistics & numerical data Insurance Pools Risk Sharing, Financial Health Benefit Plans, Employee Models, Economic Young Adult Humans United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- ISSUE: The individual insurance market functions better with larger numbers of people enrolled. Higher enrollment makes it is easier for insurers to set premiums that reflect their expected health care costs and allows them to spread administrative expenses over a larger base. Further, incentivizing healthy individuals to enroll may lead to lower average premiums. GOALS: To analyze six policy options for expanding enrollment: 1) enhancing tax credits for young adults; 2) increasing tax credit amounts; 3) extending credits to more people; 4) both increasing and extending credits; 5) adding standard reinsurance; and 6) adding generous reinsurance. METHODS: Analysis through RAND's COMPARE microsimulation model, which combines economic theory, nationally representative data, and experiential data to project consumer and business responses to policy changes. KEY FINDINGS AND CONCLUSIONS: Options to enhance, increase, or extend tax credits could increase total enrollment in the individual market by 1.0 million to 3.4 million and the insured population by 800,000 to 2.6 million. Adding reinsurance could increase enrollment by 1.2 million to 5.4 million and total coverage by 900,000 to 3.4 million. Costs for these options range from $2.5 billion to $18.8 billion, with those policies producing the biggest coverage gains generally requiring the biggest public investments.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (19 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 101718846 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101718846