Medicaid expansion and the new public health insurance exchange subsidies could lead to asharp increase in early retirement rates.

Jeff Bradley, a consulting actuary at Milliman, makes thatprediction in a commentary based partly on data from a group ofacademic researchers led by Craig Garthwaite.

Garthwaite's team looked at the effects of a sudden drop inaccess to public health coverage that affected 170,000 Tennesseeresidents in 2005.

Based on what happened in Tennessee, the team projects thePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansionprovisions could lead about 530,000 to 940,000 lower-income olderworkers to give up their jobs and sign up for Medicaid.

Bradley suggested the new exchanges, and rules that requirecarriers to sell all new individual coverage on a guaranteed-issue,mostly community-rated basis, also could give higher-income olderworkers an incentive to give up their jobs.

PPACA will let carriers sell the oldest insureds prices threetimes higher than the prices younger insureds pay, but that couldstill lower the older consumer's share of the cost of coverage insome states, especially if the consumer earns less than 400 percentof the federal poverty level and can qualify for subsidies, Bradleysaid.

A 55-year-old married couple, for example, might pay $13,461 peryear for mid-level, “silver level” coverage if the couple has about$63,000 in annual “modified adjusted gross income.”

If the same two people have just $62,000 in annual MAGI, theywould pay only about $6,000 per year for coverage, Bradleysaid.

If an employer wants to keep boomer workers on the payroll,“workforce planning for 2014 and beyond may be critical,” Bradleysaid.