Industry News

In February 2020, the Society of Actuaries (SOA) released its report, A Summary of the Health Care Cost Institute’s 2020 Annual Cost and Utilization Report.  The SOA summarized the annual Health Care Cost Institute’s (HCCI) health care cost and utilization report published on February 13, 2020.  The report illustrates employer group commercial health care costs and trends based on data from over 2.5 billion medical and prescription drug claims for about 40 million individuals enrolled in employer-sponsored health insurance from 2014 through 2018.

According to the report, “Overall allowed medical costs increased from 2017 to 2018 by 4.4% in this study population.  This trend is slightly higher than that observed in 2017, but very close to the 4-year average of 4.3% from 2014-2018 for the populations measured…. [F]rom 2013-2017 utilization trends showed an overall decline of 0.2%.  However, in 2018, utilization trends were on the rise again with a 1.8% year over year increase.  Average prices similarly grew by 2.6%, which was one of the lowest increases in recent years.”

The report is available here.