Texas: (Preliminary) Avg. unsubsidized 2023 #ACA rate changes: +8.8%

Texas

Going forward, it looks like I'm going to have to do some educated guesses for a lot of carrier enrollment numbers for the states which haven't made their full 2023 rate filing data publicly available either on their own insurance dept. sites or even via the SERFF database.

The federal Rate Review site includes the average rate increases for each individual carrier, but most of the enrollment data is still redacted.

Texas' annual health insurance rate filings are kind of a mixed bag in terms of transparecy. Hardly any of the carriers have Uniform Rate Review Template (URRT) forms or Rate Filing Justification Form Part II available (these are the documents which generally include the actual number of people enrolled in the policies for each market for that insurance carrier), and the Actuarial Memorandum (Part III) is heavily redacted for most of them, making it very difficult to lock in the actual enrollment numbers.

On the other hand, some of them do include the actual enrollment data, and thanks to a Texas Dept. of Insurance Open Records Request, I was able to acquire data for a few more (mostly on the small group market). Some of the data for some carriers is apparently still considered confidential information.

As a result, I've been able to hobble together a partly-weighted average for the 14 insurance carriers returning to Texas' individual market (there also appear to be four new entries, although I've received conflicting information about that). This assumes the total TX indy market is around 1.9 million enrollees (on + off-exchange), which should be fairly close...I hope.

Assuming I have all of this reasonably accurate, the statewide average rate increases being requested by Texas individual market carriers next year is around 8.8%.

If I'm wrong...well, the unweighted average rate increase is 8.1%, for whatever that's worth.

As for the small group market, I don't feel confident even estimating the total size of that, meaning I can't even make a guess as to the weighted average rate change, but the unweighted change is +5.4% overall.

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