June 23, 2010. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010 makes $5 billion available to fund state-run high-risk insurance pools (HRPs) through 2013. At the request of the New Jersey Governor's office, Joel Cantor and his research team at Rutgers University Center for State Health Policy have prepared a report estimating likely eligibility and enrollment numbers for a temporary high-risk health insurance pool in New Jersey.
Cantor and his colleagues use data from the 2009 New Jersey Family Health Survey (NJFHS) and the 2009 Current Population Survey (CPS) to analyze eligibility and enrollment in a high-risk pool that would work in conjunction with New Jersey's non-group market, called the Individual Health Coverage Program (IHCP). According to their analysis, approximately 14,425 to 61,594 of New Jersey's 1.3 million uninsured residents will be eligible for the new high-risk pool, and 16.5 to 24.0 percent of these are likely to enroll. This relatively low estimate of take-up is due to the high cost of coverage: Even assuming a medically-underwritten proxy premium as the "standard rate" (rather than the higher non-group rates in the IHCP), coverage will likely be unaffordable for many eligible residents.
To learn more about high-risk pools and their role in national reform, read these SHADAC issue briefs: Issue Brief #14 "State High Risk Pools and Overview" (July 2008) and Issue Brief #20 "Issues for State High-Risk Pools with Implementation of National Health Reform."