The first year of the health insurance marketplaces established by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) presented substantial challenges for insurers, which had to make assumptions about their enrollees’ medical costs and decide how high to set premium prices to ensure these costs and overhead expenses would be covered. For their new Commonwealth Fund issue brief, researchers Mark A. Hall and Michael J. McCue look at how insurance companies performed financially in the first year of full ACA reforms. In an accompanying post on To the Point, Hall and McCue discuss the key role played by the reinsurance program.
