Costs of insuring preventive care

Abstract

Age-, sex-, and other risk factor-specific recommendations, published last year by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, for preventive clinical care have raised questions concerning the costs of providing health insurance for these kinds of services. Our study provides estimates of the costs to health insurance programs of covering the Task Force recommendations for the general population (not including high-risk populations). We estimate the average increase in the 1990 cost per month in a self-insured plan without cost-sharing to be $4.35 to $6.89 for an employee with family coverage and $1.21 to $2.41 for an employee with individual coverage. Preventive services would cost the Medicare program $3.99 to $5.10 per enrollee per month.