The Department of Health and Human Services provides technical assistance on an ongoing basis to members of Congress during the legislative development process. This analysis, marked as “preliminary draft” was provided as technical assistance in response to an inquiry specifically related to the Consumer Freedom Amendment. The purpose of this analysis was to examine the potential impact of ACA and non-ACA plans, and a single or dual risk pool structure, as described by the Consumer Freedom Amendment on consumer behavior. It was performed by an HHS contractor on an accelerated timeline, and, given the narrow scope of the analysis, made a number of simplifying assumptions in the interest of time.
An unchanged ACA baseline is included for comparison purposes. It assumes a static individual market population, adequate issuer and consumer participation in a competitive insurance market, and assumes all states permit the sale of non-ACA plans alongside ACA plans (without state-specific requirements of issuers to make non-ACA plans more like ACA plans). The model assumes one plan design, though a number of benefit designs and actuarial values would likely be offered by issuers under the amendment.
For the sake of transparency and due to the interest in this proposal, HHS is publicly releasing this preliminary draft and the underlying assumptions contained therein.