Today CBO released a letter responding to questions about the subsidies that enrollees would receive for premiums and cost sharing, and the amounts that they would have to pay, on average, if they purchased a relatively low cost plan in the new insurance exchanges to be established under H.R. 3962 as introduced in the House of Representatives on October 29. The analysis reflects the preliminary analysis of that bill that CBO, in conjunction with the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, released last week.
The table accompanying the letter focuses on enrollees who purchase a reference plan (the premiums equal the average of the three lowest-cost basic plans, as defined in the bill), because federal subsidies would be tied to that average. Such a plan would have an actuarial value of 70 percent, which represents the average share of costs for covered benefits that would be paid by the plan. Although premiums would vary by geographic area to reflect differences in average spending for health care and would also vary by age, the table shows the approximate national average for the reference planabout $5,300 for single policies and about $15,000 for family policies in 2016. Enrollees could purchase a more expensive plan or more extensive coverage for an additional, unsubsidized premiumand CBO anticipates that many enrollees would do that, so the average premiums actually paid in the exchanges would be higher (although average cost-sharing amounts could be lower than those shown in the table). The figures are presented for 2016 in order to illustrate the likely situation after the proposed changes in insurance markets were fully implemented. (A downside of that approach is that the figures are harder to compare with those observed in 2009.)
Under the House bill, the maximum share of income that enrollees would have to pay for the reference plan in 2013 would range from 1.5 percent for those with income less than or equal to 133 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) to 12 percent for those with income equal to 400 percent of the FPL. (People with income below 150 percent of the FPL, however, would generally be eligible for Medicaid and thus ineligible for subsidies within the exchanges.) After 2013, those income-based caps would all be indexed so that the share of the premiums that enrollees (in each income band) paid would be maintained over time. As a result, the income-based caps would gradually become higher over time; for example, they are estimated to range from about 1.6 percent to about 12.8 percent in 2016. Enrollees with income below 350 percent of the FPL would also be given cost-sharing subsidies to raise the actuarial value of their coverage to specified levelsranging from 97 percent for those with income below 150 percent of the FPL to 72 percent for those with income between 300 percent and 350 percent of the FPL.
To illustrate the effects of those features, the table shows the amounts of income that would correspond to the midpoint of each FPL band, the resulting premiums that single individuals and families of four would have to pay for a reference plan if their income equaled that midpoint, and the share of their income that would be represented by the sum of the enrollee premiums and the average cost-sharing amount at that midpoint. For instance, a single person with income of $26,500 in 2016 (225 percent of the FPL) would pay a premium of about $1,900 (after getting a premium subsidy of 64 percent) and could expect to pay another $900 in cost sharing (net of federal subsidies); thus, the average payment by such a person for the premium and cost sharing combined is projected to be $2,800, or about 11 percent of income. A family of four with income of about $54,000 (also 225 percent of the FPL in 2016) could expect to pay about the same share of its income for premiums and cost sharing. (Because use of health care in a given year varies widely, many people would pay less in cost sharing than the average, but some would pay moresubject to the limits on out-of-pocket costs that are specified in the bill.)
The estimated average premiums and average cost-sharing amounts for the reference plan shown at the top of the tablebefore any subsidies are appliedare slightly higher than the premiums for the comparable plan shown in a similar table that CBO released on October 9 for the health care reform proposal introduced by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, as amended by the committee. (That table represented an update to a table enclosed in a letter to Chairman Baucus on September 22 that addressed the earlier Chairmans mark.). Because the reference plans in both proposals would cover the same range of benefits and have the same extent of coverage (actuarial value), the difference in premiums cannot be attributed to a difference in coverage. Instead, the difference is the net result of a number of other provisions of each proposal and primarily reflects higher average health care costs projected for enrollees in the exchanges under the House bill than for enrollees in the exchanges under the Finance Committees proposal. That difference in average health costs would arise because exchange enrollees under the House bill would be slightly less healthy, on average, than exchange enrollees under the Finance Committees proposala difference that itself reflects a number of opposing factors described in the letter.