How repeal of the individual mandate and expansion of loosely regulated plans are affecting 2019 premiums
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Issue brief (Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation)
- Author(s):
- Kamal, Rabah, author Cox, Cynthia, author Fehr, Rachel, author Ramirez, Marco, author Horstman, Katherine, author Levitt, Larry, author
- Contributor(s):
- Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, issuing body.
- Publication:
- San Francisco, CA : Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, October 2018
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Health Care Reform -- economics Insurance, Health -- economics Costs and Cost Analysis Insurance Carriers -- economics Insurance, Health -- legislation & jurisprudence Mandatory Programs Rate Setting and Review State Government Humans United States United States.
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- In health insurance systems designed to protect people with pre-existing conditions and guarantee availability of coverage regardless of health status, countervailing measures are also needed to ensure people do not wait until they are sick to sign up for coverage (as doing so would drive up average costs for other enrollees). The Affordable Care Act (ACA) included a variety of "carrots" (e.g., premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions) and "sticks" (e.g., the individual mandate penalty and limited enrollment opportunities) to encourage healthy as well as sick people to enroll in health insurance coverage. Despite the enduring popularity of the ACA's protections for people with pre-existing conditions, the individual mandate--which requires most people to maintain health insurance coverage or else pay a penalty--has consistently been viewed negatively by a substantial share of the public. After broader attempts to repeal and replace the ACA stalled out in the summer of 2017, Congress reduced the individual mandate penalty to $0 effective in 2019 as part of tax reform legislation passed last December. Soon thereafter, the Trump administration also announced new rules that will allow more loosely regulated plans--short-term limited duration (STLD) plans and association health plans (AHPs)--to proliferate on the individual market in competition with ACA-compliant coverage. These more loosely regulated plans will serve as a more affordable option for some people who are not eligible for the ACA's premium tax credits. However, particularly in the case of short-term plans, this lower-cost coverage is generally unavailable to people with pre-existing conditions and the plans often exclude coverage for certain services. STLD plans do not meet the ACA's requirement to maintain coverage, but, because the penalty for going without coverage will soon be $0, the attractiveness of STLD coverage will grow for healthy people. These plans will attract disproportionately healthy individuals away from ACA-compliant coverage, thus having an upward effect on premiums in the ACA-compliant individual market. With the effective repeal of the individual mandate penalty and the expansion of short term and association health plans, we set out to quantify how much of an upward effect these policy and legislative changes are having on 2019 premiums. Among insurers that publicly specify the effect of these legislative and policy changes in their filings to state insurance commissioners, we found that 2019 premiums will be an average of 6% higher, as a direct result of individual mandate repeal and expansion of more loosely regulated plans, than would otherwise be the case. Adding the impact from the loss of cost-sharing reduction payments--which drove up silver premiums by an average of 10% according to the Congressional Budget Office--to the impact from individual mandate penalty repeal and expansion of more loosely regulated plans, this analysis suggests on-exchange benchmark silver premiums will be about 16% higher in 2019 than would otherwise be the case. A separate analysis finds that 2019 premiums on the whole are staying relatively flat or dropping in many parts of the country, in large part because insurers are currently overpriced. Nonetheless, this analysis finds that 2019 premiums would be dropping even more if the individual mandate penalty were still in full effect.
- 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 (8 pages)).
- NLM Unique ID:
- 101740393 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/101740393