Every year, I spend months painstakingly tracking every insurance carrier rate filing (nearly 400 for 2025!) for the following year to determine just how much average insurance policy premiums on the individual market are projected to increase or decrease.
Carriers tendency to jump in and out of the market, repeatedly revise their requests, and the confusing blizzard of actual filing forms sometimes make it next to impossible to find the specific data I need.
I really only need three pieces of information for each carrier:
It was in early 2021 that Congressional Democrats passed & President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which among other things dramatically expanded & enhanced the original premium subsidy formula of the Affordable Care Act, finally bringing the financial aid sliding income scale up to the level it should have been in the first place over a decade earlier.
In addition to beefing up the subsidies along the entire 100 - 400% Federal Poverty Level (FPL) income scale, the ARPA also eliminated the much-maligned "Subsidy Cliff" at 400% FPL, wherein a household earning even $1 more than that had all premium subsidies cut off immediately, requiring middle-class families to pay full price for individual market health insurance policies.
Here's what the original ACA premium subsidy formula looked like compared to the current, enhanced subsidy formula:
Political battles are usually won based on appealing to emotion, not to facts, policy or logic.
However, you should still have those facts at your disposal for two reasons: First, they still help you craft appeals to emotion. Second, they also help you craft the actual policy. Besides, I'm a data guy; my primary job is to help put facts & policy into easily-understandable context.
June is Pride Month — a time to find joy in community and celebrate the progress we’ve made toward becoming a more inclusive Colorado.
For several years, Connect for Health Colorado has proudly supported Pride Month events across metro and rural areas, connecting with and learning how we can continue to best serve all Coloradans.
We know our vibrant, diverse communities make us stronger.
That’s why we’re committed to providing everyone with the resources and support they need to find health coverage that works best for them, and feel confident and comfortable when they seek care.
Our support of Pride Month events is important, perhaps now more than ever. People in the LGBTQIA+ community face persistent disparities in health coverage and care; are more likely to be uninsured or underinsured; and too often, experience discrimination in medical settings.
That’s why we continue to prioritize outreach to the LGBTQIA+ community and build trust in communities throughout the state — working to ensure that every person feels supported when accessing coverage and care.
NJ Department of Banking and Insurance Warns of Congressional Reconciliation Bill Package’s Impact on Health Insurance Access
TRENTON — New Jersey Department of Banking and Insurance Commissioner Justin Zimmerman has sent a letter to New Jersey’s Congressional delegation warning them of the devastating impacts of the reconciliation package on access to quality, affordable health coverage for millions of Americans who need it, including over 513,000 New Jerseyans. The letter follows the U.S. House passage of the reconciliation package on May 22. A version of the bill is currently pending before the U.S. Senate.
The bill package would repeal key provisions of the Affordable Care Act, making it more difficult and expensive to enroll in coverage through Get Covered New Jersey, the State’s Official Health Insurance Marketplace. This legislation would:
OLYMPIA, Wash. – Ingrid Ulrey, CEO of Washington Health Benefit Exchange, the state-based marketplace for Affordable Care Act plans, released a statement today following the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) announcement of the 2025 Marketplace Integrity and Affordability Final Rule.
“Together, this major new regulatory action, plus imminent Congressional action on the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, plus the potential expiration of enhanced premium tax credits at the end of this year is a perfect storm for nearly 300,000 Washingtonians who rely on our marketplace to purchase private health insurance.”
Governor Kathy Hochul today announced the launch of the Essential Plan Cooling Program, an affordability initiative that provides free air conditioners to eligible New Yorkers who are enrolled in the State’s Essential Plan and live with persistent asthma, helps reduce heat-related health risks and improves quality of life during the hottest months of the year.
The Supreme Court seemed likely to uphold a key preventive-care provision of the Affordable Care Act in a case heard Monday.
Conservative justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, along with the court’s three liberals, appeared skeptical of arguments that Obamacare’s process for deciding which services must be fully covered by private insurance is unconstitutional.
If this happens, it would mean the ACA exchange market would drop by more than 1/3 from the ~24.2 million currently enrolled (myself & my own family included).
However, I've repeatedly stated that even this is likely a low estimate--the remaining ~16 million exchange enrollees would still be hit with MASSIVE (and in some cases eye-poppingly huge) premium hikes which would force them to drop to far worse plans (meaning much higher deductibles & co-pays; worse provider networks and so on).
The good news is, the Illinois Insurance Dept. now provides a handy, simple table with the actual average rate changes as well as direct links to the actuarial memos & other filing forms for every carrier, which made it easy for me to plug in the effectuated enrollment & calculate the weighted average rate hikes for every carrier in both the individual and small group markets.
The bad news is, the actuarial memos themselves are heavily redacted, meaning I'm unable to see how much of the rate hikes are due to the IRA subsidies expiring, CSR payments being reinstated or Trump's tariffs.
