Jon Gabel and other analysts at a University of Chicago research center say states should consider protecting Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act commercial health insurance market rules by doing more to limit access to the stop-loss insurance market.

If states fail to make it harder for small employers to use stop-loss insurance to self-insure, brokers may help many small employers cut health benefits costs by self-insuring, Gabel and his colleagues wrote in a new paper published in Health Affairs.

The researchers polled 604 private U.S. employers with three to 50 employees from January through June. They found that 72 percent of the employers offered health benefits, and 80 percent of the firms that offer health benefits use agents or brokers.

Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.

Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor
NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Allison Bell

Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.