Connecticut: Weighted avg. *requested* 2016 rate increase: 7.7%

Last year, Connecticut was a perfect example of how the initial requested insurance policy rate changes from the companies involved in a given state can end up changing dramatically after the approval process (and in CT's case, change even more when the actual Open Enrollment period actually arrives). The original requested average increas in CT was 12.8%, but the approved changes ended up only being around 4.5%...and in the end they were far lower: Less than a 1% overall weighted average increase!

With that in mind, here's the story on 2016 requested changes in CT:

Four major health care providers that offer plans on Connecticut's health insurance marketplace have filed for rate increases for the upcoming open enrollment period that begins Nov. 1, 2015.

...The following increases have been proposed: 2 percent for ConnectiCare, 6.7 percent for Anthem, 12.4 percent for United Healthcare and 13.96 percent for Healthy CT.

Actuaries with the Connecticut Department of Insurance will review the proposals before final decisions are made some time in August.

Connecticut is the 3rd state (along with Oregon and Washington) to make their 2016 rate requests public (or at least it's the 3rd state to do so that I've been made aware of).

The unweighted average is 8.8%, but again, you have to weight it for the relative market share of all the companies...and in fact, you also have to include the off-exchange ACA-compliant policies as well, which make up around 41% of the total (CT had at least 111K QHP selections via the ACA exchange as of 4/30; assuming around 88% paid, that's roughly 98K on the exchange, plus another 69K off-exchange QHPs (the blue entries are the exchange-based numbers...Anthem's 55K = both on & off combined; roughly 33K of that should be on the exchange + 22K off-exchange:

As you can see, the overall weighted average requested rate increases in Connecticut for individual, non-grandfathered, ACA-compliant healthcare policies for 2016 is 7.7%, which is again below the 10-11% average increase in pre-ACA years...and hopefully this average will drop further once the CT insurance dept. actuaries issue their approved rate.