(Washington, DC) - Today, the District of Columbia Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking (DISB) announced the 2022 approved individual and small business health insurance rates. As a result of the Department’s review, most insurers decreased their initial rate proposals, which will save District residents more than $16 million.
“On behalf of the Bowser Administration, DISB performed a thorough review of 157 small group plans and 27 individual plans to ensure that they meet the District’s standards and provide non-discriminatory, accessible and affordable health insurance for our residents,” said DISB Commissioner Karima M. Woods.
In 1981, there was a fantastic drama starring Paul Newman and Sally Field entitled “Absence of Malice” about journalistic ethics and how people’s lives can be damaged in the wake of the public being given only part of the story, even when everyone involved believes they’re doing the right thing. It’s a great film and I highly recommend it.
A few days ago I posted an entry titled “What’s the deal with the Bloomfield Hills School Board?” in which I laid out pretty much everything I knew about the controversy here in Bloomfield Hills surrounding a list made by one district parent who strongly supports school masking mandates of other parents in the district who they believed opposed such mandates.
Since Delta began circulating widely in the U.S., Covid has exacted a horrific death toll on red America: In counties where Donald Trump received at least 70 percent of the vote, the virus has killed about 47 out of every 100,000 people since the end of June, according to Charles Gaba, a health care analyst. In counties where Trump won less than 32 percent of the vote, the number is about 10 out of 100,000.
The good news about New Hampshire's health insurance market is that they're the only state without its own ACA exchange which produces publicly-accessible monthly reports on individual on-exchange market enrollment. The bad news is that they don't seem to publish the actual rate filings in an easy-to-read format, which means I'm left with the federal rate review website. The problem with that is the rate filings are mostly heavily redacted, making it impossible to get the total enrollment data.
As a result, I only have on-exchange enrollment numbers for the individual market and no enrollment data for five of the six small group market carriers in New Hampshire. For the individual market, it looks like the off-exchange market only has around 7,000 enrollees, since nearly 48,000 are on-exchange.
Assuming similar ratios for the off-exchange market, that's a weighted average increase of 3.2%; if not, the unweighted average increase is just under 5.0%.
Division of Insurance announces approved health insurance plans and rates for the individual health insurance market
October 1, 2021
Division announces approved health insurance plans and rates for the individual health insurance market
Nevada Consumers encouraged to view and compare health insurance plans and rates for 2022
Carson City, NV – In preparation for Open Enrollment next month, the Nevada Division of Insurance has made public the approved health insurance rates for consumers who shop on the individual health insurance market, both on and off the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange (Exchange), which is the state agency that oversees and connects eligible Nevada residents to affordable health and dental plans through Nevada Health Link.
Losing Free COBRA Premiums or Job Health Insurance? You Can Still Enroll in Health Coverage for the Last Few Months of 2021
Residents with a Qualifying Event Have Options to Get Covered
DENVER – Thousands of Coloradans will lose free COBRA premiums at the end of the month and may need other affordable coverage options. Through the American Rescue Plan Act, which passed earlier this year, many people were able to receive free COBRA premiums through September 30. Connect for Health Colorado, the state’s health insurance marketplace, is reminding residents that they can still sign up for a health insurance plan for the remainder of the year if they experience a Qualifying Life Event, such as losing free COBRA premiums this month or losing job health insurance.
Methodology reminders, including some important updates:
I go by FULLY vaccinated residents only (defined as 2 doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine or one dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine).
I base my percentages on the total population, as opposed to adults only or those over 11 years old.
For most states + DC I use the daily data from the Centers for Disease Control, but there are some where the CDC is either missing county-level data entirely or where the CDC data is less than 90% complete at the county level. Therefore:
For California, I'm using the CDC data for most counties and the state health dept. dashboard data for the 8 small counties which the CDC isn't allowed to post data for.
The 5 major U.S. territories don't vote for President in the general election, preventing me from displaying them in the main graph, but I have them listed down the right side.
Assuming the first case was ~December 15th or so, it was roughly 325 days from then until the Presidential Election on November 3rd, 2020, or a little under 11 months.
It's been 327 days from Election Day through September 26, 2021.
In other words, almost exactly as much time has passed in the post-election phase of the COVID pandemic as in the pre-election phase.
Nebraska doesn't even bother listing indy/small group plan rate filings on their own insurance department website...the link goes directly to the federal Rate Review database. The problem with this is that very few filings here are unredacted, which means it's difficult to acquire the policy enrollees for many carriers needed to run a weighted average.
Fortunately, Nebraska has only 3 carriers for 2022...one of which is brand new to the state (Oscar Health), and of the other two, Medica's filing summary does include an exact number of enrollees. That leaves just Bright Health, and since I know (roughly) how many enrollees are in Nebraska's overall indy market, voila: 8.6% average rate increases.
On the other hand, I don't have the enrollment for any of the 4 Small Group market carriers. It also looks like UnitedHealthcare is pulling out of the NE sm. group market, but it might just be that the federal database doesn't have them listed yet (I doubt this since it's so close to the Open Enrollment Period). The unweighted average rate change is a 2.1% reduction:
