A TriNet Group Inc. survey found 71 percent of small business owners worry that health care reform legislation will increase their health care costs and 56 percent believe it will cause “unnecessary complexity”.  Of those respondents who believe that the legislation will increase cost, 44 percent indicated that they would reduce benefits to recoup their costs while 21 percent said they would first look to cut wages and 20 percent said they would reduce staff.

From the introduction:

Full report: http://www.trinet.com/documents/white_papers/TriNet_WP_2009_HRTrends_Q3.pdf

A report conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and released by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) on October 12, estimates that the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform legislation could add $1,700 to family health insurance premiums by 2013 and could raise family premiums by over $4,000 by 2019.

From the report:

America's Health Insurance Plans engaged PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to examine the impact of four components of the health reform bill being proposed by the Senate Finance Committee as introduced. These include:

• Insurance market reforms and consumer protections that would raise health insurance premiums for individuals and families if the reforms are not coupled with an effective coverage requirement.
• An excise tax on employer-sponsored high value health plans (or "Cadillac plans") that in a few years could also raise premiums for some moderate value plans.
• Cuts in payment rates in public programs that could increase cost shifting to private sector businesses and consumers. These changes are expected to more than offset the potential reduction in cost shifting resulting from providing coverage to the uninsured.
• New taxes on health sector entities that are likely to be passed through to consumers.
• The increases in private health insurance coverage described above would be on top of the underlying growth in medical costs over the coming period.

 This analysis shows that the cost of the average family coverage is approximately $12,300 today and could be expected to increase to approximately:

• $15,500 in 2013 under current law and to $17,200 if these provisions are implemented.
• $18,400 in 2016 under current law and to $21,300 if these provisions are implemented.
• $21,900 in 2019 under current law and to $25,900 if these provisions are implemented.

Price Waterhouse Coopers. (2009).  Potential impact of health reform on the cost of private health insurance coverage.

Full report: http://www.politico.com/static/PPM116_pwc2.html

A Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysis found that, if the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform legislation is enacted, Medicare cuts will reduce the five major health insurance companies’ earnings by 50 percent.   Of the five major companies—UnitedHealth Group Inc., Humana Inc., Cigna Inc., WellPoint Inc., and Aetna Inc.—Humana will be the most affected while Cigna will be the least affected because of its low number of Medicare enrollees.  Goldman Sachs also estimates that the legislation would halve profit margins on individual and small-group policies to 3 percent over 10 years but double the number of enrollees to 20 million.

Full article: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ajUZG_1UTWm8

This Urban Institute brief examines the effects of age rating rules under different versions of congressional health care reform.  It uses Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model (HIPSM) to compare the financial implications of the differing age rating ratios (5:1, 2:1, and 1:1) which would control the price disparity between older and younger adults’ premiums.

From the summary:

The authors find that there is little difference in overall health insurance coverage or aggregate spending under reform, regardless of the premium rating option chosen. However, practical affordability of total health care costs (premiums and out-of-pocket expenses) will be strongly related to premium rating rules for those individuals and families with incomes too high to qualify for federal subsidies, particularly those with incomes between 400 and 500 percent of the federal poverty level. For many older adults and older families, the higher out-of-pocket costs that come with greater medical use in older age, combined with high premiums due to steep age rating (such as 5:1 bands), would lead to a high burden of total health care costs relative to income.

The Urban Institute.  (2009). Timely analysis of immediate health policy issues. Blumberg, Linda,  Buettgens, Matthew & Garrett, Bowen.

Full report: http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/411970_age_rating.pdf

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) released a report outlining a 6.4 percent decline in employer-sponsored health insurance from 2000 to 2008 and predicting a further decline through 2010 due to rising unemployment.  In addition, the report contains state-level data on employer-sponsored health coverage trends

From the report:

While coverage did not decline for workers between 2006 and 2007 as the economy expanded, there were secular declines in coverage from peak to peak, 2000 to 2007. The declines since 2007 can be partially attributed to the start of the recession in December 2007 and partially to the overall trend in declining coverage. Men have lower rates of coverage than women (68.4% vs. 72.1%), and have experienced larger declines over the 2000s. Similar to the overall population, large disparities exist in ESI coverage by race and ethnicity. Over three fourths of white non-Hispanic workers are covered as compared to less than half of Hispanic workers. College graduates have far higher rates of employment based coverage than high school graduates, at 82.1% and 64.4%, respectively. In addition, high school graduates experienced declines more than twice as large as college graduates since 2000.

Economic Policy Institute. (2007). Employer-sponsored health insurance erosion continues. Unabated declines in coverage since 2000 are expected to worsen through 2009. Gould, Elise.

Full report: http://epi.3cdn.net/6356d48ae59f625af6_xxm6bnyn2.pdf