Monday, April 27, 2009

Setting and Valuing Health Insurance Benefits

This report briefly describes some of the key concepts and policy issues around specifying and valuing health insurance benefits. "Actuarial value" is a summary measure of a health insurance plan's benefit generosity. It is expressed as the percentage of medical expenses estimated to be paid by the insurer for a standard population and set of allowed charges. An actuarial value may also be referred to as a "benefit rate." One purpose of an actuarial value is to distill all the benefit and enrollee cost-sharing provisions of a health insurance plan into a single number, for easier comparisons among plans. Source: Congressional Research Service

Download full pdf report | Link to online abstract

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