Virginia: Some (sort of) encouraging news re. 2018 exchange carriers...

Last year Virginia was the first state out of the gate with their initial 2017 individual & small group market rate filings. I'm not sure if this is chance or if they simply have the earliest filing deadline. I'm guessing the latter, because, as Zach Tracer noted earlier today, Virginia is again the first state to list their 2018 Individual and Small Group Market participants. Remember, these are initial filings only, and very much subject to change throughout the summer and early fall. Here's who Tracer says has stated is committing to being on the ACA exchanges this fall...at the moment, anyway:

• Aetna Health: Individual
• CareFirst Blue Choice: Individual / Sm. Group
• Cigna: Individual
• GHMSI: Individual / Sm. Group
• HealthKeepers: Individual
• Innovation Health Insurance: Individual
• Kaiser: Individual / Sm. Group
• Optima Health: Individual
• Piedmont Community HMO: Individual

That's 9 on the individual market total, 3 of which say they'll also be on the SHOP (Small Business) exchange as well, although let's face it at this point SHOP is pretty much a rounding error in most states. The only one on the exchange this year missing from the list is UnitedHealthcare, although "Golden Rule" is a United subsidiary available off-exchange only this year.

Actually, some of the carriers do already have initial paperwork submitted to the state's SERFF system; here's what I see so far for 2018:

Individual Market:

• Cigna: (On & Off Exchange)
• Golden Rule (not specified, but they're only off-exchange this year so likely the same next year as well)
• GHSMI: (On & Off Exchange, PPO)
• Innovation Health (On & Off Exchange, PPO)
• Optima Health: (not specified in the filing but they're on the exchange this year and on the list above, PPO)

Small Group Market:

• Aetna (Off Exchange PPO)
• Anthem (Off Exchange PPO)
• Federated Mutual (PPO)
• GHMSI (On & Off Exchange PPO)
• Innovation Health (Off Exchange PPO)
• MAMSI Life & Health (Small Group POS)
• Optima Health (unspecified, PPO)
• UnitedHealthcare (unspecified, POS/other)

I'm not gonna make too much of these this early on; again, some of these could easily change, and obviously the 4 missing carriers from the individual market list at the top haven't been added to the SERFF database yet. Plus, again, there's no actual rates yet.

However, this does suggest that in Virginia, at least, the carriers don't appear to be fleeing for the hills...yet.