2017 Rate Request Early Look: Pennsylvania

Last year, the insurance carriers in Pennsylvania asked for a weighted average 15.6% rate increase for individual market policies...but in the end state regulators knocked these down by over 1/5th to around 12% overall.

This year the picture is uglier, as expected. While four of the filings are for rate hikes of under 10%, this is misleading because one of them appears to be brand new while the other 3 have a combined enrollment of...7 people. Not 7,000, not 700...seven.

The rest of the filings range from 16% to a whopping 48% increase request from Highmark Health Insurance for over 20,000 enrollees. Ouch.

Overall, the weighted state-wide average requested rate hike on the individual exchange is 23.6%.