Comprehensive Report on Health Insurance Plans and KFF Analysis

This report analyzes health insurance plans offered by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), including bronze, silver, gold, and platinum levels. It details the actuarial values, benefits, and drawbacks of each plan, as standardized by the Affordable Care Act. The report critiques the KFF website's information, highlighting the advantages of silver plans in absorbing financial impacts and the benefits of platinum plans for those with chronic health issues. It also discusses the challenges of plan availability and cost, especially for platinum plans, and the importance of cost-sharing reductions for low-to-moderate income groups. The report assesses the ease of use of the KFF website, emphasizing the availability of updated data, news, and local information, and references key sources like Claxton, Cox & Rae (2015) and KFF publications from 2017 and 2019.

Running head: HEALTH CARE
Health care
Name of the student:
Name of the University:
Author’s note

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Summary of insurance offered:
The Kaiser Family Foundation provides three levels of health insurance namely the
bronze, silver, gold and platinum. The value for these health insurance levels include 60% for
bronze, 70% for silver, 80% for gold and 90% for platinum. The actuarial value for each of the
plan was standardized by the Affordable Care Act. The website mentions about the need for
Americans to get at least the bronze plan so that they are eligible for hardship exemption. This is
covered through different types of health insurances like Medicaid, Medicare and Private
insurance. Papers could select from four different levels of health insurance on offers. All the
plans provide different health benefits to consumers. (KFF, 2019). It shows that these markets
are profitable too. For example, for a family with chronic health issues, gold and platinum plans
are more cost effective as much of the cost will be covered through this plan. However,
variations on the plan are also on offer for those with low income.
Critique of the insurance offered:
KFF website reports about the benefits of different levels of health insurance. With
respect to the silver plan, the main benefit is that it absorbs the financial impact of the loss of
cost-sharing reductions payments by increasing the premium values from 7% to 38%. Hence,
silver plan is the plan with maximum coverage. The website tracks down the plan and its
development across each state of the USA. The KFF analysis in 32 states and Washington D.C.
revealed that many increased the premium to end the cost-sharing reduction payments (Kaiser
Family Foundation, 2017). Hence, the advantage of the level of insurance offers is that it pays
attention to the issues or challenges in covering insurance for low income groups too. Based on
the percentage of health care expense covered, the platinum plan is often assumed to be most

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beneficial for Americans. However, the disadvantage associated with this plan is that its
popularity is much lower than other plans due to high cost involved. Hence, insurers stay away
from this plan leading to limited availability of the plan.
As the per KFF website, the main purpose of the mental tiered level of health insurance is
to minimize the potential exposure to out-of-pocket costs. These plans offer cost-sharing
reductions to low-to-moderate income groups. The actuarial value for a silver plan increase for
people having income around 100-250 % of poverty. Hence, the benefit for people with silver
plan is that the out of pocket maximums will be similar to those of gold or platinum plans
(Claxton, Cox & Rae, 2015). In contrast, the platinum plan is particularly beneficial for those
with high medical expense due to a chronic disease condition. Thus, if an individual are aware of
their out-of-pocket expenses and they are not bothered by high monthly premiums, they can
easily choose the platinum plans. In addition to this, by choosing a lower tier plan, people can
save money too. However, lack of availability of platinum plan is one major drawback of the
plan. Due to low enrolment rate and high costs, most insurers have stopped offering the platinum
plans.
In the context of bronze plan, the benefits of the plan is that it can work for those
individuals who do expect to use much of health services as well as those with high health care
expense. For the latter group, bronze plan provides the benefit of providing cheapest out-of-
pocket expenditure. Despite this, the data for plan coverage in different states of America shows
diverse utilization of the plan. The data is different. In Arizona, the bronze plan cover 54, 797
individuals, whereas in Delaware the coverage is low evidenced by value of 6.701 (KFF, 2019.

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Ease of the site and information available:
After using the Kaiser Family foundation website to access information on health
insurance programs, it can be said that it is not easy get direct information from the sites.
However, the website gives regular updates and news related to latest policy and spending for
each type of insurance. The website has vast data available and use of appropriate search strategy
can help to get the desired results. The site has adequate local data about insurance and selection
of appropriate dates and key words can help to get the desired information. The website has the
most updated and accurate information on health policies. It also displays results of latest
tracking polls and Kaiser health news which can keep people updated about coverage of health
care policy and politics.

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References:
Claxton, G., Cox, C., & Rae, M. (2015). The cost of care with marketplace coverage. Henry J.
Kaiser Family Foundation.
Kaiser Family Foundation (2017). ANALYSIS: ACA Silver Plan Premium Increases
from 7% to 38% Attributed to End of Cost-Sharing Payments. Retrieved from:
https://www.kff.org/health-reform/press-release/analysis-aca-silver-plan-
premium-increases-from-7-to-38-attributed-to-end-of-cost-sharing-payments/
Kaiser Family Foundation (2019). Marketplace Plan Selections by Metal Level. Retrieved from:
https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/marketplace-plan-selections-by-metal-
level-2/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location
%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%22%7D
Kaiser Family Foundation (2019). Our health plan options. Retrieved from:
https://medicare.kaiserpermanente.org/wps/portal/medicare/plans/learn/
medicare_plan_options