Objective: To produce cost estimates of proposed health insurance benefit mandates for the California legislature.
Data sources: The 2001 California Health Interview Survey, 2002 Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Education Trust California Employer Health Benefits Survey, Milliman Health Cost Guidelines, and ad hoc surveys of large health plans were used.
Study design: We developed an actuarial model to estimate short-term (1 year) changes in utilization and total health care expenditures, including insurance premiums and out-of-pocket expenditures, if insurance mandates were enacted. This model includes baseline estimates of current coverage and total current expenditures for each proposed mandate.
Principal findings: Analysis of seven legislative proposals indicated 1-year increases in total health care expenditures among the insured population in California ranging from 0.006 to 0.200 percent. Even when proposed mandates were expected to reach a large target group, either utilization or cost was sufficiently low to keep total cost increases minimal.
Conclusions: Our ability to develop a California-specific model to estimate the impacts of proposed mandates in a timely fashion provided California legislators during the 2004 legislative session with more-detailed coverage and cost information than is generally available to legislative bodies.