Massachusetts: Preliminary 2019 ACA rate hikes: 4.1% (rough); NO #ACASabotage impact

NOTE: The good news is that I don't have to worry about any sabotage impact for Massachusetts in 2019 (thanks to the state still having their pre-ACA individual mandate penalty in place and banning #ShortAssPlans outright). This obviously makes that part of my analysis very easy--I can just enter "0%" across the board in the "2018 sabotage factor" columns.

The bad news is that determining the market share for each carrier in Massachusetts is a royal pain in the ass. only two of the twelve carriers offering individual market plans actually state what their enrollment numbers are, and this is further confused by the fact that several of them (Fallon, Harvard Pilgrim and Tufts) have two or three different listings for different divisions of the company.

In addition, Massachusetts is one of just two states where the individual and small group market risk pools are merged, making it even more difficult to separate out the two for market share purposes.

I've been able to patch together rough estimates of the individual market enrollment numbers by working off of the July MA Health Connector Dashboard Report, but even that isn't terribly helpful, since the listings for Harvard Pilgrim and Tufts are still confusing.

As a result of all this, I've added a major caveat to my spreadsheet below: The 4.1% average premium increase for 2019 is a very rough estimate only.

Having said that, assuming this is accurate, MA enrollees should be looking at average premiums only increasing by around $16/month, none of which will be related to this year's #ACASabotage actions by Donald Trump or Congressional Republicans.