An Analysis of Health Insurance Premiums under the U.S. Senate's Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

 Information below has come for a Congressional Budget Office(CBO) and Joint Committee on Taxation Report, which has been released on November 30, 2009. To read the entire report Download 11-30-Premiums

 

 

The CBO’s and JCT’S Definitions of insurance groups:

Nongroup Policies: New policies purchased from insurers individually

Small Group Market: Employer-based policies for organizations/business with 50 or fewer workers.

Large Group Market: Employer-based policies for organizations/business with more than 50 workers.

 Nongroup Policies CBO and JCT estimate that the average premium per person covered (including dependents) for new nongroup (policies would be about 10 percent to 13 percent higher in 2016 than the average premium for nongroup coverage in that same year under current law. About half of those enrollees would receive government subsidies that would reduce their costs well below the premiums that would be charged for such policies under current law.

Small Group and Large Group Markets

The legislation would have much smaller effects on premiums for employment-based coverage, which would account for about five-sixths of the total health insurance market. In the small group market, the CBO and JCT estimate that the change in the average premium per person resulting from the legislation could range from an increase of 1 percent to a reduction of 2 percent in 2016 (relative to current law).6 In the large group market the legislation would yield an average premium per person that is zero to 3 percent lower in 2016.