Description: The SOA’s Health Care Cost Trends Strategic Research Program highlights trends in health care costs and high cost claimants, impacts of population driven risk factors on health care costs and innovative approaches to keeping costs in check.

Description: The Society of Actuaries has developed and released a health care forecast model to illustrate the potential impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on insurance plan health care costs in the United States. Users of the model may include insurance company actuaries seeking an additional reference point for 2021 cost development, regulatory actuaries seeking additional insights and validation of costs as part of rating submissions for 2021, and insurance purchasers seeking a deeper understanding of the forces driving 2021 health care costs and premiums. The model is not intended as a replacement for existing modeling tools developed by insurers or regulators. Rather, the model’s primary purpose is to illustrate the key outbreak-related forces that are affecting the trajectory of health care costs. In addition the model can provide a common reference point to facilitate dialogue with respect to the regulatory review of 2021 health insurance rate filings.

Description: The purpose of this document is to inform the user of the 2021 Health Care Cost Model about the sources of data, other reports, and assumptions which were used to populate this report and drive some of the key considerations.