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July 23, 2013 at 10:55 AM
The range of health insurance prices available in the commercial individual and family health insurance market is wide.
In Wisconsin, for example, a single male nonsmoker, age 30, could pay $468 per year for a plan with a $3,500 annual deductible, a $4,500 out-of-pocket maximum, and a 20 percent coinsurance rate.
The same young male nonsmoker could pay as much as $3,924 per year for a plan with a $500 annual deductible, a $3,000 out-of-pocket maximum and a 20 percent coinsurance rate.
In New York state, a state that takes a more active approach to health insurance rate regulation, premiums for the young male nonsmoker could range from $1,986 to $24,324. The annual deductibles were not available on the HealthCare.gov site. The cheapest policy offered no cap on out-of-pocket expenses. Information about any out-of-pocket maximum was not available for the most expensive policy.
In Vermont, another state with an active rate regulation strategy, the young male nonsmoker could pay as little as $665 per year — for a policy with a $100,000 annual deductible — and as much as $3,505 per year, for a policy with a deductible of just $3,500. In Vermont, neither base policy would have a limit on the out-of-pocket maximum.
Analysts at the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) have published those figures in a report on the range of health premiums available throughout the United States. The GAO prepared the report for Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
The GAO analysts came up with six hypothetical standardized customers, then looked at what the minimum premium, median premium and maximimum premium figures might be for those customers.
