• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Books are my comfort food!

An almost top 10,000 blog!

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. keep building.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

“But what about the lurkers?”

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Everybody saw this coming.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

So many bastards, so little time.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Oppose, oppose, oppose. do not congratulate. this is not business as usual.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

Mobile Menu

  • Seattle Meet-up Post
  • 2025 Activism
  • Targeted Political Fundraising
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • COVID-19
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Anderson On Health Insurance / Silver or Gold benchmarks

Silver or Gold benchmarks

by David Anderson|  March 5, 20199:25 am| 4 Comments

This post is in: Anderson On Health Insurance

FacebookTweetEmail

Aang asked a great question in comments yesterday:

How difficult would it be to make the benchmark plan the second cheapest gold plan? Would it be worthwile? Seems it would give bigger subsidies and less cost sharing for those who don’t qualify for CSR.

This is an important question because there is a wide variety of ACA 3.1 plans floating around out there. Most attempt to use an appropriation of CSR to pay for other things. Those plans attempt to hold harmless beneficiaries of Silverloading by either expanding CSR eligibility up the income scale or resetting the benchmark to a Gold plan instead of a Silver plan.

Charles Gaba has a great chart on the options.

There are trade-offs to beefing up a Silver benchmark with more CSR versus less CSR but resetting the benchmark to Gold.

Keeping the benchmark at Silver lowers average actuarial value for the lightly subsidized folks. There is a chance that these folks will see a below benchmark premium for a single Silver plan and an array of Bronze plans. There is little chance (using 2017 data to back out Silverloading) that someone making 400% FPL will see a Bronze plan for under $100 a month. And the people who will see that low cost Bronze plan will be married late 50s and early 60s in very high cost regions; they will not improve the risk pool.

Resetting the benchmark to Gold will make CSR less relevant as the benchmark is doing a lot of the work of upping actuarial value to middle income individuals and families. The market will be more sorted by health status as healthier buyers may choose to move from an 85% AV Gold CSR plan to a 70% Silver plan to save on premiums while individuals and families that anticipate high costs will stay in the CSR plans. This is a risk adjustment challenge but it is surmountable.

More importantly, for the families that are not CSR eligible, they will be exposed to far more zero dollar plans in Bronze. Zero premiums may matter for incremental enrollees who are flipping a coin between buying or not buying insurance. Dr. Coleman Drake of Pitt, and I have some preliminary work that we’ll be presenting at Academy Health’s Annual Research Meeting in June on this subject.

From a mechanical standpoint, insurers will want to know what the rules are a good nine to twelve months before open enrollment. Once they know what the rules are and are confident that they are stable for the upcoming policy year, the implementation of a Silver or a Gold benchmark should not matter too much to the insurers. At the policy level, it is a harder decision as Gold benchmarks, all else being equal, will lead to higher enrollment of the marginal buyer which means incrementally healthier risk pools.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « On the Road and In Your Backyard
Next Post: The Omar Fiasco »

Reader Interactions

4Comments

  1. 1.

    Aang

    March 5, 2019 at 12:44 pm

    Thank you. I wasn’t aware of the Senate bill that would set the benchmark to Gold.

    Will any of the proposals allow people below 100%FPL to buy on the exchanges in states that haven’t expanded medicaid?

  2. 2.

    David Anderson

    March 5, 2019 at 1:30 pm

    @Aang: No.

  3. 3.

    StringOnAStick

    March 5, 2019 at 1:43 pm

    There’s a whole group of not at Medicare age people out here who would love to cut back to part time work and open up a job slot for a younger person, but can’t afford to do so because of the cost of health insurance. I wish someone would think about us when they are drafting possible legislation.

  4. 4.

    Jennifer Chumbley

    March 5, 2019 at 4:32 pm

    @StringOnAStick: assuming part time for a couple puts them under $65K-ish in income, there are significant subsidy dollars available. I highly recommend looking at healthcare.gov to determine actual premium

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - Winter Wren - North of Quebec City (part 2 of 3) - Cap Tourmente and on the way to Tadoussac 4
Image by Winter Wren (5/16/25)

Recent Comments

  • Soprano2 on Lunch Among the Ruins (Open Thread) (May 16, 2025 @ 2:07pm)
  • Baud on Lunch Among the Ruins (Open Thread) (May 16, 2025 @ 2:07pm)
  • Raven on Lunch Among the Ruins (Open Thread) (May 16, 2025 @ 2:07pm)
  • Raven on Lunch Among the Ruins (Open Thread) (May 16, 2025 @ 2:06pm)
  • Soprano2 on Lunch Among the Ruins (Open Thread) (May 16, 2025 @ 2:06pm)

PA Supreme Court At Risk

Donate

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
War in Ukraine
Donate to Razom for Ukraine

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Meetups

Upcoming Ohio Meetup May 17
5/11 Post about the May 17 Ohio Meetup

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Hands Off! – Denver, San Diego & Austin

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix

Keeping Track

Legal Challenges (Lawfare)
Republicans Fleeing Town Halls (TPM)
21 Letters (to Borrow or Steal)
Search Donations from a Brand

PA Supreme Court At Risk

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Copyright © 2025 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!