Most Insurers
Participating in the Marketplaces Don’t Expect COVID to Affect Their 2022
Costs
After a tumultuous year
of unpredictable COVID-19 changes to utilization and spending, a review
of early rate filings for individual market insurers participating in the
Affordable Care Act Marketplace finds that most are expecting a return to
normal in 2022 without the pandemic playing a large role.
The review of insurers’ preliminary rate filings in 13 states and the
District of Columbia reveals that most expect health utilization patterns
to return to their pre-pandemic levels and generally aren’t expecting any
additional costs or savings related to COVID-19 in their 2022 rates. Of
the 75 insurer filings submitted in these states, 16 predict that COVID-19
will have an impact in 2022, generally pushing rates up by less than a 1
percentage point.
The pandemic led to a sharp drop in health spending in April 2020, as
many providers cancelled elective procedures and patients practiced
social distancing and avoided health care facilities. Since then,
spending has mostly rebounded, though utilization this year remains
somewhat lower than normal.
Other factors that insurers cite as impacting their 2022 rates include
continued use of telehealth services in place of in-person visits, and a
somewhat healthier marketplace population due to increased tax credits
included in the American Rescue Plan Act. Few mentioned any impact from
the No Surprises Act, which prohibits most surprise out-of-network bills
starting next year.
Although the ACA Marketplaces cover a relatively small share of the
privately insured population, the rate filings for this market are quite
detailed and publicly accessible, making them a useful source of
information on how insurers are thinking about their likely health costs.
Insurers largely made similar assumptions about how COVID-19 would affect
their group market costs, the analysis finds.
The brief is available on the Peterson-KFF
Health System Tracker, an online information hub dedicated to
monitoring and assessing the performance of the U.S. health system.
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