The impact of the coverage-related provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on insurance coverage and state health care expenditures in Connecticut : an analysis from Rand Compare

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains substantial new requirements aimed at increasing rates of health insurance coverage. Because many of these provisions impose additional costs on the states, officials need reliable estimates of the likely impact of the ACA in their state. To demonstrate the usefulness of modeling for state-level decision making, RAND undertook a preliminary analysis of the impact of the ACA on five states—California, Connecticut, Illinois, Montana, and Texas—using the RAND COMPARE microsimulation model. For Connecticut, the model predicts that, in 2016 (the year that all of the provisions in the ACA related to coverage expansion will be fully implemented), the uninsured rate in Connecticut will fall to 5 percent; without the law, it would remain at 11 percent. The model projects that total state government spending on health care will be 10 percent lower for the combined 2011–2020 period than it would be without the ACA, mostly because of federal subsidies for residents who would have been covered by Connecticut’s state-run health insurance program (State-Administered General Assistance). This article is a shorter version of a technical report published by Rand Corporation in 2011 (https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR973z1.html