This chart sets forth the average premium rate adjustments that health insurers have requested from the New York State Department of Financial Services (DFS). There are 16 insurers that have submitted individual rates and 20 insurers that have submitted small group rates for 2018. These are the rates insurers have requested and are not the final premium rates DFS will approve. Under the Insurance Law, the Superintendent may deny or modify the requested rates if she finds that the insurer's request is unreasonable, excessive, discriminatory or inadequate based on sound actuarial assumptions and methods (Insurance Law §§ 3231(e)(1), 4308(c)). From the date DFS posts insurer rate applications on the DFS website, the public will have 30 days to submit comments to DFS on the proposed rates. The total percentage requested rate increase for individual and for small group on the chart below represent a weighted average that accounts for the relative share of overall enrollment for each insurer.
So, I got back from my trip to the NIHCM awards dinner in DC late last night, and am groggily attempting to bone up on all the healthcare stuff which happened while I was gone (ironic, of course, given that I was attending a healthcare-related event filled with other healthcare wonks/reporters).
Of the 31 states which have expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, only a handful issue regular monthly or weekly enrollment reports.
I noted in February that enrollment in the ACA's Medicaid expansion program had increased by around 35,000 people across just 4 states (LA, MI, MN & PA).
It's early June now, so I checked in once more, and the numbers have continued to grow. I have the direct links for 5 states now (including New Hampshire)...
Between updating the "Who could lose coverage" graphics, prepping for my town hall thing last night and updating the 2018 Rate Hike project, I've gotten way behind on my "Who's saying 'screw rate hikes, I'm just gonna bail completely next year' updates. Let's take care of that now, OK? The first three updates are courtesy of Louise Norris writing for healthinsurance.org; the fourth is vai Kimberly Leonard for the Washington Examiner:
Insurers in Idaho had to submit forms for 2018 plans by May 15, but they have until June 2 to file rates. Mountain Health CO-OP, SelectHealth, PacificSource and Blue Cross of Idaho all filed forms to continue to offer Your Health Idaho plans in 2018.
I've been warning for months now that the Trump administration is doing everything possible to disrupt, undermine and otherwise sabotage the ACA exchanges as much as possible. Yes, the GOP in general has been doing so for 7 years now, but they've really shifted it into overdrive now that they hold all the cards.
In the past, some of those sabotage efforts were obvious and had a direct impact on the exchanges (the Risk Corridor Massacre, for instance) while others were smaller, less obvious and harder to pinpoint a precise cause/effect relationship (red states attempting to obstruct ACA navigators, for example). Donald Trump and his rogue's gallery of cretins are not exactly known for their subtlety, however, so his obstruction/sabotage efforts have been pretty blatant, including:
Insurance Commissioner Announces Single-Digit Aggregate 2018 Individual and Small Group Market Rate Requests, Confirming Move Toward Stability Unless Congress or the Trump Administration Act to Disrupt Individual Market
The ASPE report made a simple claim: That average individual market premiums have more than doubled since ACA-compliant policies were launched in 2014. It plugged in the average individual market premiums for this year and compared them against the average indy market premiums for 2013 (the last year before all newly-enrolled policies had to be ACA compliant). It only included the 39 states maintained by the federal exchange, HealthCare.Gov, and concluded that on average, monthly premiums had increased from $224 in 2013 to $476 in 2017...a 105% increase over 4 years.
For 2017, North Carolina's unsubsidized, weighted average individual market rate hikes came in at around 24.2%. With carriers like Aetna, United Healthcare, Humana and Celtic all dropping out of the NC exchange market, there wasn't much math to do in order to find a weighted average: The only individual market carriers left were Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC, Cigna and "National Foundation Life Insurance", which is basically a non-entity shell company related to "Freedom Life", the less said about the better. Since Cigna only had around 1,200 indy market enrollees at the time (less than 0.5% of the total market share), that pretty much left BCBSNC as the only game in town, so their 24.3% hike was the whole shebang for the state.
