sábado, 2 de junio de 2012

Individual Insurance Benefits To Be Av... [Health Aff (Millwood). 2012] - PubMed - NCBI

New Study Projects Savings by Affordable Care Act to Individual Health Insurance Policyholders

People with private individual health insurance would likely save $280 a year in out-of-pocket spending for medical care, including prescription drugs, under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), according to an AHRQ study published May 16 online by the journal Health Affairs. ACA would decrease out-of-pocket spending by $589 for people ages 55 to 64 and by $535 for low-income adults. The study also estimates that under ACA, the percentage of individually insured adults whose out-of-pocket spending exceeds $6,000 a year would fall from 2.6 percent to 0.6 percent. The study projected an individual’s likely annual savings from 2001 to 2008, based on data from AHRQ’s nationally representative Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, which collects data on how Americans use and pay for health care. About 11 million nonelderly Americans had private individual health insurance in 2009. Select to access the abstract.

Health Aff (Millwood). 2012 May 16. [Epub ahead of print]

Individual Insurance Benefits To Be Available Under Health Reform Would Have Cut Out-Of-Pocket Spending In 2001-08.

Hill SC.

Source

Center for Financing, Access, and Cost Trends, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, in Rockville, Maryland.

Abstract

Under the Affordable Care Act, individual health insurance will probably become more generous and more like employment-related insurance. Currently, individual insurance typically has less generous benefits than employment-related insurance. This study compared out-of-pocket spending on health care between individual and employment-related insurance, controlling for numerous characteristics such as health status. Then it simulated the impact of full implementation of provisions of the Affordable Care Act on adults who currently have individual insurance, including important subgroups-adults with chronic conditions, the near-elderly (ages 55-64), and low-income populations. If adults who had individual insurance during 2001-08 had instead had benefits similar to those under the Affordable Care Act, their average annual out-of-pocket spending on medical care and drugs might have been $280 less. The near-elderly and people with low incomes might have saved $589 and $535, respectively. An important improvement would have been the reduced probability of incurring very high out-of-pocket spending. The likelihood of having out-of-pocket expenditures on care exceeding $6,000 would have been reduced for all adults with individual insurance, and the likelihood of having expenditures exceeding $4,000 would have been reduced for many.