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NY Child Health Plus returns 0 for families above 400% FPL that owe full unsubsidized plan premium #8097

@MaxGhenis

Description

@MaxGhenis

Follow-up from #8086 (17-state CHIP premium framework) and #8090 (SPM integration).

Problem

NY Child Health Plus premium schedule currently encoded (ny/hhs/chip/premium/per_child.yaml) charges:

FPL band Per child / mo Family cap
0 - 222% $0 $0
222 - 250% $15 $45
250 - 300% $30 $90
300 - 350% $45 $135
350 - 400% $60 $180
>400% $0 (not encoded) $0

Per NY DOH, families above 400% FPL pay the full unsubsidized plan premium, which varies by health plan. We currently return $0 for these households, which understates out-of-pocket cost for higher-income CHIP-enrollees.

Same pattern as PA CHIP (skipped entirely in #8086 because CHIP premium varies by MCO from ~$45-$380/month across plans and tiers).

Why this matters

The families affected are a small share of CHIP enrollment nationally, but the dollar magnitude per household is large (hundreds of dollars per month of unmodeled cost). Cliff visualization will show a sudden $0 premium at 400% FPL where reality is a spike.

Options

  1. Approximate with a representative unsubsidized benchmark (statewide average of NY CHP plan premiums). Still per-child with the family cap pattern. Document as an approximation.
  2. Skip the >400% FPL tier (current state) but add a null / NaN return that surfaces as "not modeled" in downstream calculators rather than $0.
  3. Model by MCO. Requires a chip_plan input variable, substantial encoding effort, and is likely out of scope for a microsim that doesn't have plan-choice simulation.

Recommend (1) with a representative rate until the broader plan-choice question is addressed.

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