2025 Rate Changes

Here's the preliminary 2025 ACA individual and small group market rate filings. Unfortunately, the effectuated enrollment isn't available this year for the carriers in either market, so I can only offer unweighted averages...which include a 3.1% reduction on the indy market and a 6.9% increase for small group enrollees.

the only other noteworthy item is that it looks like HealthPartners UnityPoint is dropping out of Iowa's small group market next year...but with 9 other carriers participating there's still plenty of options for that population.

Georgia's health department doesn't publish their annual rate filings publicly, but they don't hide them either; I was able to acquire pretty much everything via a simple FOIA request. Huge kudos to the GA OCI folks!

Georgia's individual market has grown dramatically over the past two years; it went from 660,000 in 2023 to 813,000 people in 2024 to a stunning 1.3 MILLION this year. The weighted average rate increase for unsubsidized enrollees will go up 9.9% if state regulators approve all of the carrier requests as is.

via Covered California: (this is actually from nearly a month ago; somehow I missed it at the time):

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California announced its health plans and rates for the 2025 coverage year with a preliminary weighted average rate increase of 7.9 percent.

The rate change can be attributed to many factors, including a continued rise in health care use, increases in pharmacy expenditures, the rising cost of care, labor shortages and other issues affecting the health care industry.

Because of the robust financial help available to Covered California enrollees, many will see a small impact, if any, to their monthly cost. Covered California, with the support of Gov. Newsom and the California Legislature, has worked to reduce the impact of increased consumer costs in 2025 by providing more support for its state-enhanced cost-sharing reduction (CSR) program, which will eliminate deductibles and lower the cost of care for over a million Californians.

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, which sometimes posts average rate requests which don't match up with the actual filings...but it's gonna have to do here. 

With these two data sources in hand, New Hampshire's individual market carriers are asking for a weighted average increase of 4.8%. It's important to note that Anthem Health Plans and Matthew Thornton Health Plan are listed as separate carriers on the federal Rate Review website (with separate average rate requests), but on the state's monthly report, they're merged into a single listing.

With no way of knowing what the actual enrollment breakout is between these two, I'm assuming a 50/50 split.

via the Idaho Dept. of Insurance:

Each year, the Idaho Department of Insurance posts rate changes of individual and small group health insurance products so consumers can review and provide comments on the proposed increases.  Insurance companies submit proposed rates for the upcoming calendar year to the Department, along with descriptions and justifications for why the rates are reasonable and not excessive.  The Department of Insurance is seeking public input for rate changes of individual and small group health insurance products to improve insurer accountability and transparency.  By following the links below, the public can access a summary of the increase amounts and the carrier justifications for the rates.  Please submit any comments to the Department for consideration.

Preliminary Rates - 2025

Please choose one of the categories to proceed:

Alaska is a sparsely populated state with only two carriers on their individual market and four on their small group market. Alaska's insurance department website is useless when it comes to getting rate filings or enrollment data; I had to use the federal Rate Review site to even get the requested rate changes.

Fortunately, both carriers (Premera Blue Cross and Moda Health Plan) include summaries which list their current enrollment data. Unfortunately, the average rate increase being requested by the carriers for 2025 is up another 17%. While nearly all ACA exchange enrollees receive financial subsidies, this is still pretty steep for the few who aren't.

From Premera's summary:

Originally posted 8/05/24; updated 9/19/24

The good news is that RateReview.HealthCare.Gov has posted the preliminary 2025 rate filing summaries for every state, making it much easier to pin down which carriers are actually participating in the individual & small group markets next year, as well as what the carriers average requested rate changes are in states which don't publish that data publicly (or which make it difficult to track down if they do).

The bad news is that in many of those states, acquiring the actual enrollment data is even more difficult, as their rate filings tend to be heavily redacted.

Last May, I noted that the Illinois state legislature had passed a law which made my heart sing:

via the Minnesota Commerce Dept:

Individual Market PROPOSED Average Rate Changes

The summary table below provides an overview of proposed average rate changes for plan year 2025 in the individual health insurance market as reported by the insurers. 

It is important to note that while these are initial rates as proposed and filed, rates are subject to review by the Departments of Commerce and Health. Final approved rates may vary from these proposed rates for many reasons. 

Proposed rates do not reflect the impact of federal premium tax credits that are available to eligible Minnesotans who purchase their coverage through MNsure. 

Additionally, the change in actual premium a consumer will pay in 2025 can vary from the proposed average change due to factors such as the specific plan selected, geographic rating area and age.

Small Group Market Proposed Average Rate Changes for Plan Year 2025

The Michigan Dept. of Financial Services hasn't issued any press release yet, but nearly all 2025 preliminary rate filings for the MI individual and small group markets are available via the SERFF database.

The most noteworthy item in Michigan's individual market is that there's a new entry: HAP CareSource. I'm assuming this is some sort of joint insurer effort by CareSource and Health Alliance Plan (which has only offered off-exchange ACA plans for several years now) but am not certain about that.

In terms of actual rate hikes, most of them are in the mid single digits, but Priority Health, which holds exactly 1/3 of the market share (equal to Blue Cross when you combine their PPO & HMO divisions), is seeking an eye-opening 18.9% average rate increase.

With Priority Health included in the mix, rate increases being requested by Michigan indy market carriers average 10.5% for 2025.