Nationally, 2021 #ACA Individual Market Premiums still look to increase by ~1.2% on average

My 2021 Rate Change project still isn't complete yet for two reasons: First, I only have the final/approved 2021 rate filings for 28 states as of today (vs. preliminary rates for all 50 states + DC). Second, a higher-than-usual number of carriers have made it impossible (or at least highly difficult) to dig up their effectuated enrollment data for 2020.

Without that number, I have no way of running weighted averages for that state's individual market; those are listed in grey below. In a few cases (like Florida), the state insurance dept. actually provided the weighted average but I still had to guess at the total enrollment number (also in grey).

This is a bigger problem than you might think. Let's say a state has 3 carriers requesting a 5% rate reduction, a 2% increase and a 15% increase. The unweighted average would be +4%....but if it turns out that the first carrier holds 90% of the market share this year, the weighted average would be more like -4%. You see the problem here.

Having said that, it definitely looks like average unsubsidized premiums are only going up modestly next year. The national average increase based on preliminary rate filings is just 2.1%, and across the 28 states I have approved rates for, it's even lower...just 0.8%.

It's possible that the remaining states will bring the approved average up higher, of course, but unlikely...note that in 23 of the 28 states I have final numbers for so far, the approved average is either identical or lower than the preliminary rates asked for. I'm fairly confident that when all the final numbers are available, the national average will be somewhere between 0.8 - 2.1%, likely around +1.2% or so.