MHA Health Care Aide

Report estimates ACA impact on employer-sponsored health coverage

In yet another recent entrant into the collection of studies on the potential impact of health reform, Avalere Health on June 20 issued an analysis that the employer-sponsored health insurance market is likely to remain fairly stable after 2014, when a number of key provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act go into effect. Those provisions include the Medicaid expansion, new subsidies to purchase coverage through state-based health insurance exchanges, small business tax credits, penalties on certain employers who do not offer coverage or offer unaffordable coverage, the individual mandate, and the high-cost plan excise tax.

Certain segments of the market, such as firms employing low-wage workers and early retirees, "are likely to obtain coverage through the new health insurance exchanges in either 2014 or soon after because the ACA provides alternatives or new economies of scale for these segments that do not currently exist," the report concludes. "On the other hand, large employers are unlikely to stop offering coverage in the near-term as the benefit to dropping coverage may not outweigh the costs for both the employer and their employees."

While near-term changes in aggregate employer-sponsored insurance rates are unlikely, "longer term erosion - over 10 to 20 years - is possible under certain circumstances," the report adds.

Raising the Age of Medicare Eligibility: A Fresh Look Following Implementation of Health Reform

One of the policy options for reducing the federal deficit is to increase the eligibility age for Medicare to 67 from 65. The Kaiser Family Foundation has a new study out looking at the savings and the costs.

Read more here.

How US healthcare reform will affect employee benefits

The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that only about 7 percent of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) will have to switch to subsidized-exchange policies in 2014. However, our early-2011 survey of more than 1,300 employers across industries, geographies, and employer sizes, as well as other proprietary research, found that reform will provoke a much greater response. Overall, 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering ESI in the years after 2014.
 
Read the full article from the McKinsey Quarterly (free registration required).

Series to Explore Health Reform and the Private Insurance

The Kaiser Family Foundation on June 13 launched a new series of short notes that will dissect and help explain the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and the private health insurance market. The series, Notes on Health Insurance and Reform, will feature timely posts that clarify complex regulatory and insurance topics, provide context for ongoing policy debates, and foreshadow significant implementation challenges.

The series is part of the new Kaiser Initiative on Health Reform and Private Insurance, which will examine the implications of changes in the private insurance market under the Affordable Care Act and inform federal and state policymakers as they implement provisions of the health reform law. The initiative focuses on such topics as new rules that make insurance more accessible to people with pre-existing health conditions and require a minimum level of coverage; the creation of insurance purchasing exchanges by states; state review of proposed premium increases; and the design of tax credits to subsidize coverage for modest-income families.