COMPARE is a microsimulation model that predicts the effects of health policy changes at national and state levels. The model takes a synthetic data set with information on a nationally representative sample of individuals and their employers and predicts how they will react under different policy scenarios. Our model has been used extensively since the inception of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) to estimate the effects of health reform on key outcomes, including the number of people with health coverage, the number of people who will buy coverage through the new insurance exchanges, the number of firms that will offer coverage, and government spending. This page is intended to provide information to policymakers, researchers, and other individuals who are interested in contacting the COMPARE team or using the model to estimate the effects of policy changes.
Read More About How the Microsimulation Model Works
In this report, the authors analyze how allowing adults ages 50 and older to buy into the Medicare program could affect health insurance coverage, individual market premiums, and federal health care spending.
There is growing interest in a "public option" for individual market insurance to improve affordability and enrollment. The authors estimate how adding a federal public option could affect enrollment, premiums, and government spending.
How will elimination of the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate penalty affect the nongroup insurance market in the state of New York? Researchers used RAND's COMPARE microsimulation model to estimate the effects.
This report assesses how the state-sponsored single-payer health program New York Health would affect health care utilization and costs in New York, estimating its effects on key outcomes and comparing them with future outcomes under the status quo.
The options analyzed would increase individual market enrollment by 400,000 to 3.2 million in 2020. Net increases in total enrollment (300,000 to 2.4 million) are smaller because of offsetting decreases in employer-sponsored insurance.
Under alternative assumptions about consumer responses, we find that enrollment falls by 2.8 million to 13 million people nationwide and premiums for bronze plans increase by 3 percent to 13 percent when the mandate penalty is removed.
Extending the duration of short-term individual health plans will have little effect on premiums or enrollment in the individual market.
The COMPARE microsimulation model is available for use through contract with RAND by state governments, the federal government, or those studying health insurance reforms.
For more information, contact COMPARE@rand.org.
