Kentucky: Preliminary 2019 #ACA rate hike request: +12.2% WITH #ACASabotage, est. -0.4% *without* #ACASabotage

Kentucky's 2019 preliminary Rate Filings have been posted, and they're pretty straightforward: Like this year, there will only be two carriers offering policies on the KY individual market in 2019: Anthem and CareSource, with roughly a 46/54 market share split.

The overall average requested rate increase is around 12.2% between the two. Neither carrier states just how much of their requested increase is due to mandate repeal or #ShortAssPlans (CareSource did list it...but then redacted it from public view). The Urban Institute projected around an 18.7 percentage point impact; 2/3 of that is around 12.5 points, so that's what I'm assuming until further notice.

Assuming that's accurate, that means that if not for the mandate/shortassplan sabotage factors, Kentucky carriers would be keeping unsubsidized 2019 premiums flat year over year (or even dropping them a smidge).

ALSO WORTH NOTING: According to the spreadsheet set up by Dave Anderson, Louise Norris, Andrew Sprung and myself last fall, Kentucky went the Silver Load route for CSR cost loading this year, but for 2019 it appears that the carriers have been instructed to go the full Silver Switcharoo route by only loading CSR costs onto on-exchange Silver plans (see CareSource filing below).