The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) could either cut enrollment in U.S. employer-sponsored group health plans just a little or cut it a lot.
Analysts at the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions have published PPACA forecasts based on those possibilities in report on what the U.S. health care system might look like in 2020.
Opponents of PPACA are still trying to repeal all or parts of the law or to block implementation.
The Deloitte analysts developed projections for eight scenarios.
In the first, the analysts assumed PPACA would work about as the federal government seems to expect.
In three other forecasts, the analysts assumed employers would be faster to drop coverage and send employees to buy coverage through the new PPACA health insurance exchanges or through the traditional individual health insurance market.
If PPACA works "as expected," the individual and small group PPACA exchanges might provide coverage for about 40 million people in 2020, traditional individual health insurance plans might cover fewer than 5 million people, and traditional group health plan enrollment might drop to about 130 million, from about 150 million today, the analysts predicted.
In that scenario, the analysts said, only 2 percent of large employer and 5 percent of small employers would drop coverage.
