Analysts do Hawaii PPACA math

by Allison Bell, BenefitsPro, September 26, 2013

Letting sick residents of Hawaii buy individual health coverage for the same price as healthy people might help them but would add about 50 percent to the average cost of coverage.

Consultants at Oliver Wyman, a unit of the Marsh & McLennan Cos., offered that estimate in a report on the effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in Hawaii.

The Hawaii Insurance Division, an agency in a state that supports PPACA and is setting up a state-based public exchange, commissioned the report.

The Oliver Wyman consultants expect individual premiums to average $346 in Hawaii in 2014, up from an average of $231 today.

The effect of allowing more people with health problems enter the individual health insurance risk pool on morbidity will be enough to account for all $115 of the increase in average individual premiums between 2013 and 2014, the consultants write.

Also in the report, they estimate PPACA could have additional effects on the average Hawaii individual health premium, such as:

- A 7 percent bump in the underlying cost of medical care could increase the average by $72.

- Temporary PPACA risk-management programs could cut the average by $40.

- A PPACA provision that will require individual and small-group plans to cover an essential health benefits package could increase the average by $27.

- New taxes could increase the average by $17.

- Efforts to persuade more young, healthy people to buy coverage could cut the average by $12.

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DCCA Report: Impact of the Affordable Care Act on the Hawaii Marketplace