2021 Health Care Cost Model

The Society of Actuaries (SOA) created the SOA 2021 Health Care Cost Model (model) to enable users to estimate future U.S. health care insurance costs. As with any forward‐looking health care cost model, future health care costs are a function of trending costs forward in time and recognizing new levels and timing of health care costs. The COVID‐19 outbreak impacting the U.S. creates many new scenarios that affect costs now and in the future. This model allows a user to consider a variety of scenarios and create inputs that can forecast the impact on the health care service system. The model will be updated periodically to reflect the latest data on both the outbreak and insurance health care costs. A user guide, user training video and model documentation guide have also been developed to support the model and are posted below. The report, Illustrative Forecasts of the Impact of COVID-19 on Health Care Costs, shows outputs of using the model.

Materials

• Model Spreadsheet
• User Guide
• User training video
• Model Documentation Guide
• Illustrative Forecasts of the Impact of COVID-19 on Health Care Costs
• COVID-19 Return Stages: Deferral and Restarting of Health Care Services
• An Excel Tool for Examining How Social Mobility Has Changed Due to the Outbreak

Videos

2021 Health Care Cost Model Insights 

COVID-19 and the Health Care Cost Model

Podcast

Questions or Comments?

If you have comments or questions, please send an email to research@soa.org.

Thank You

The SOA would like to thank the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for their support of this project through a grant to the Society of Actuaries Research Institute.

The SOA would like to thank Wakely Consulting Group for their participation in this project with aggregated data and review of baseline health care costs and direct COVID-19 related health care costs.

The SOA would like to thank NovaRest Actuarial Consulting for their participation in this project with peer review of the mechanics of the model and input on the model User Guide.

The SOA would like to thank the following individuals for their input on the project:

Jessica Altman

John Bertko

Al Bingham

Niall Brennan

Michael Cohen

Jeff Czajkowski

Dave Dillon

Roy Goldman

Jennifer Halttunen

Katherine Hempstead

Heather Howard

Steve Jackson

Annette James

Eric King

Daniel Meuse

Donna Novak

Vanessa Olson

Ed Pudlowski

Brian Renshaw

Hayley Rogers

Paul Stordahl

Cori Uccello

Brian Webb

Ross Winkelman

Emily Zhong

Dale Hall, SOA Managing Director of Research

Achilles Natsis, SOA Health Research Actuary

Patrick Wiese, SOA Lead Modeling Researcher

Erika Schulty, SOA Research Associate

Ann Weber, SOA Director of Government Affairs

The SOA makes no warranty, guarantee or representation, either expressed or implied, regarding the SOA 2021 Health Care Cost Model (“Model”), including its quality, accuracy, reliability, or suitability and hereby disclaims any warranty regarding the Model’s merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose.  SOA makes no warranty that the Model is free from errors, defects, worms, viruses or other elements or codes that manifest contaminating or destructive properties.  In no event shall SOA be liable for damages (including any lost profits, lost savings, or direct, indirect, incidental, consequential or other damages) in connection with or resulting from the use, misuse, reliance on, or performance of any aspect of the Model.  The user assumes all responsibility for the use of the Model.