Estimating the impact of cost-sharing changes on the federal actuarial values (AVs) for individual and small group plans that are part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is often a guessing game. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) limits the number of non-standardized plan options, so this paper serves as a convenient reference to better estimate AV impacts driven by cost-sharing changes and to optimize issuers’ product portfolio strategy. We cover the following:

• Introduction, including background on HHS’s AV Calculator (AVC) 
• AVC sensitivity analysis, strategy, and limitations
• Next steps