2018 Rate Hikes: Indiana (early look)

Louise Norris gave me a heads' up regarding the Indiana 2018 rate filings. Anthem BCBS and MDwise, which currently have around 46,000 and 30,800 exchange enrollees each, are dropping out next year, meaning nearly 77,000 people will have to shop around. Anthem is sticking around the off-exchange market....but only in a handful of counties. Norris indicates around 64,687 total Anthem enrollees; minus the 46K on-exchange, that leaves roughly 18.7K off-exchange enrollees, virtually all of whom are expected to drop due to Anthem dropping out of all but 5 counties (plus, of course, the large rate hike).

This leaves only two carriers participating in the ACA exchange next year at the moment: CareSource Indiana and Celtic Insurance (which is apparently actually Centene). As far as I can tell (and according to Norris), the rates listed for all three carriers assume no TrumpTax...that is, that the individual mandate will be fully enforced and CSR reimbursements will be made. I don't have an official "with TrumpTax" number for any of the remaining carriers, but the Kaiser Family Foundation projects Indiana having to tack on 14 points on average to make up for a lack of CSR payments, so I'm using that for the moment. That makes Indiana's individual market look something like the following as of today:

CareSource's mere 2.2% increase request is pretty interesting; even without the TrumpTax included, that's the lowest overall increase request I've seen from a carrier so far this year. It's also worth noting that according to their filing (see below), they plan on expanding coverage to 75 of Indiana's 92 counties...but area apparently leaving a few others. Hannah Recht says that as far as she can tell, Decatur, Jackson, Wayne and Grant Counties are currently scheduled to "go bare" next year.

ADDENDUM: I also have all of Indiana's small group market rate hike requests; unfortunately, finding the enrollment/market share for that is trickier, so the best I can do for the moment is an unweighted average of around 12.8%. However, again, this is based purely on dividing the total rate hike requests by the total number of sm. group carriers (12), so I wouldn't rely on that.