USA – What if the American Rescue Plan’s Enhanced Marketplace Subsidies Were Made Permanent? Estimates for 2022 (Urban Institute)

The recently enacted American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) includes several provisions designed to expand access to affordable health insurance coverage in 2021 and 2022, while the economy continues recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic and recession. One provision is the expansion of Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace subsidies over that period, which could substantially reduce household spending on health care, reduce the number of people uninsured, and increase marketplace enrollment, but the new subsidies’ effects may be limited by their brief availability.  In this paper, we seek to show the maximum potential impact of the ARP’s enhanced marketplace subsidies on health insurance coverage by modeling the new subsides as if they were permanent changes (instead of limited to 2021 and 2022).