Risk Adjustment Risk Sharing And Premium Regulation In Health Insurance Markets

Risk Adjustment, Risk Sharing and Premium Regulation in Health Insurance Markets: Theory and Practice describes the goals, design and evaluation of health plan payment systems. Part I contains 5 chapters discussing the role of health plan payment in regulated health insurance markets, key aspects of payment design (i.e. risk adjustment, risk sharing and premium regulation), and evaluation methods using administrative data on medical spending. Part II contains 14 chapters describing the health plan payment system in 14 countries and sectors around the world, including Australia, Belgium, Chile, China, Columbia, Germany, Ireland, Israel, the Netherlands, Russia, Switzerland and the United States. Authors discuss the evolution of these payment schemes, along with ongoing reforms and key lessons on the design of health plan payment. Provides a conceptual toolkit that describes the goals, design and evaluation of health plan payment systems in the context of policy paradigms, such as efficiency, affordability, fairness and avoidance of risk selection Brings together international experience from many different countries that apply regulated competition in different ways Delivers a practical toolkit for the evaluation of health plan payment modalities from the standpoint of efficiency and fairness

In this volume, leading American health economists provide a critical assessment of the current state of knowledge of insurance market reform that is accessible to both policy-makers and researchers.

The book pulls together a series of articles by the authors that initiated the research areas of "optimal risk adjustment" and "optimal quality reporting." The papers present the basic theoretical models and link them to empirical application. Design of health insurance premiums to achieve efficient and fair outcomes is also covered. The chapters in the book also cover the intellectual development of approaches to health insurance regulation, beginning with more abstract models to those with explicit empirical and policy applications.

The United States is unique among economically advanced nations in its reliance on employers to provide health benefits voluntarily for workers and their families. Although it is well known that this system fails to reach millions of these individuals as well as others who have no connection to the work place, the system has other weaknesses. It also has many advantages. Because most proposals for health care reform assume some continued role for employers, this book makes an important contribution by describing the strength and limitations of the current system of employment-based health benefits. It provides the data and analysis needed to understand the historical, social, and economic dynamics that have shaped present-day arrangements and outlines what might be done to overcome some of the access, value, and equity problems associated with current employer, insurer, and government policies and practices. Health insurance terminology is often perplexing, and this volume defines essential concepts clearly and carefully. Using an array of primary sources, it provides a store of information on who is covered for what services at what costs, on how programs vary by employer size and industry, and on what governments doâ€"and do not doâ€"to oversee employment-based health programs. A case study adapted from real organizations' experiences illustrates some of the practical challenges in designing, managing, and revising benefit programs. The sometimes unintended and unwanted consequences of employer practices for workers and health care providers are explored. Understanding the concepts of risk, biased risk selection, and risk segmentation is fundamental to sound health care reform. This volume thoroughly examines these key concepts and how they complicate efforts to achieve efficiency and equity in health coverage and health care. With health care reform at the forefront of public attention, this volume will be important to policymakers and regulators, employee benefit managers and other executives, trade associations, and decisionmakers in the health insurance industry, as well as analysts, researchers, and students of health policy.

Abstract: Risk adjustment of payments to health plans is fundamental to regulated competition among private insurers, which serves as the basis of national health policy in many countries. To date, estimation and evaluation of a risk adjustment model has been a two-step process. In a first step, the risk-adjustment payment weights are estimated using statistical techniques, generally ordinary-least squares, to maximize some statistical objective such as the R-squared; then, in a second step, the risk adjustment model is evaluated, usually with simulation methods, but without an explicit framework describing the objective of the model. This paper first develops such a framework and then uses it to replace the two-step "estimate-then-evaluate" approach with a one-step "estimate-to-maximize-the-objective" approach. We assume that the objective of risk adjustment is to minimize the loss from service-level distortions due to adverse selection incentives, and we derive expressions for the service-level distortions as a linear function of the risk adjustment payment weights. We show that when the number of risk adjustor variables exceeds the number of decisions plans make about service allocations, incentives for service-level distortion can always be eliminated. Under these circumstances the welfare maximizing payment weights can be found with a constrained least-squares regression where the constraints are the conditions under which plan actions achieve efficiency. We illustrate this method with the data used to estimate risk adjustment payment weights in the Netherlands (N=16.5 million). When the number of "services" exceeds the number of available risk adjustors, however, it is not possible to eliminate incentives for service-level distortion. In this case, a regression on transformed data produces the (second-best) payment weights that minimize welfare loss

Between 1987 and 1991, the portion of Americans covered by individually purchased health insurance dropped 40per cent. Assuming the US will continue to rely on private financing for health care, the author clarifies benefits to society from an efficient health insurance market.

In this essay, we review the theory and evidence concerning selection in competitive health insurance markets and discuss the common policy tools used to address the problems it creates. We begin by outlining some important but often misunderstood differences between two types of conceptual frameworks related to selection. The first, which we call the fixed contracts approach, takes insurance contract provisions as given and views selection as influencing only insurance prices in equilibrium. The second, the endogenous contracts approach, treats selection as also influencing the design of the contract itself, including the overall level of coverage and coverage for services that are differentially demanded by sicker consumers. After outlining the selection problems, we discuss four commonly employed policy instruments that affect the extent and impact of selection: 1) premium rating regulation, including community rating; 2) consumer subsidies or penalties to influence the take-up of insurance; 3) risk adjustment; and 4) contract regulation. We discuss these policies with reference to two markets that seem especially likely to be targets of reform in the short and medium term: Medicare Advantage and the individual insurance markets reformed by the Affordable Care Act of 2010.