Well, today the Colorado Dept. of Insurance released their approved rate hikes for both the individual and small group markets. Unfortunately, I don't see an actual carrier-by-carrier breakout, but they do provide weighted averages by other criteria such as metal level, on exchange vs. off exchange and so on:
While it would be nice to have the averages weighted by carrier, the on/off breakout is kind of interesting because it also lets me know what the relative numbers are between the two. For the individual market, note that the on exchange weighted average is 20.9% vs. the off-exchange's 19.9%.
Insuring people through Obamacare — which was crafted in part to cover people who can't get health insurance through their jobs — may be costing less money than if they had employer-based coverage, a new study suggests.
The study, by the Urban Institute, comes as premium rates for 2017 Obamacare plans are being finalized. Those premiums are expected to rise more sharply, on average, than in recent years.
But the report found that certain key Obamacare plans, on average, cost 10 percent less in premiums than average employer-based coverage, when adjusting for how much the plans cover for medical services, as well as for adjustments for health-care usage and age distribution.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas will be the sole player in the ACA marketplace here, making Tarrant County the largest metro area in the state down to one participant.
Four of the previous insurers in the county — Aetna, Scott & White, Cigna and UnitedHealth — each confirmed they have pulled out of the ACA marketplace throughout the state.
According to my original estimates from back in May, Cigna only has around 19,000 people enrolled in individual market plans to begin with: 14,000 via Cigna Health & Life Insurance, 5,000 via Cigna Healthcare of Texas. However...
...Cigna also will continue to offer individual plans off the marketplace, according to spokesman Joe Mondy.
A week or so ago, the Washington Insurance Commissioner announced that the weighted average rate hike for 46 plans certified by the state insurance dept. regulators is 13.1%. However, there was a major caveat: There were another 52 plans which still had to be certified by the board. Without knowing the average rate hike for the other half of the plans, there's no way of knowing what the final approved average increase will be.
In addition, I also don't know what the relative market share of any of the plans (certified vs. uncertified) is, so there's no way of weighting the average across the full market. For all I know, 90% of enrollees might be among the first 46 (in which case any variances mong the other 52 plans would barely move the needle). Alternately, 90% could be among the missing 52 plans, or anywhere in between.
Maricopa County residents could have a new health insurer on the Affordable Care Act exchange next year, but it might not be the insurer that many local observers thought it would be.
Last month I noted (well, after Louise Norris called my attention to it) that after 2 years of restricting all individual market enrollments to their still-buggy ACA exchange, the state of Vermont actually reversed this policy for 2016 by allowing individuals to enroll in ACA-compliant policies directly through the carriers after all.
This actually goes against the recommendations I just wrote about yesterday, leaving the District of Columbia as the only other exchange to require all indy plans to run through it), but given how many technical problems Vermont seems to still be having with their platform, I can understand them allowing direct enrollment for the time being. I stand by my recommendation that every state should eventually move everything onto the exchange in the future, however.
As I've been noting for a few months now, Connect for Health Colorado's monthly enrollment reports are chock full of data and confusing as hell at the same time.
Earlier today, the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (not sure why those two are lumped into a single committee, but whatever) held hearings on The State of Health Insurance Marketplaces.
In my latest piece for healthinsurance.org, I list seven reasons why other states should follow the District of Columbia's lead by requiring that all individual market healthcare policies be sold on the ACA exchange exclusively...along with, I also admit, three issues which would have to be dealt with in doing so.
Alexander Bill Would Extend Subsidies to Off-Exchange Plans
Sen. Lamar Alexander is introducing a bill Wednesday that would extend Affordable Care Act subsidies to plans off of the exchanges for some eligible consumers.
I don't usually post a whole lot about the small group market (other than occasionally trying to track how many SHOP enrollees there are by state and nationally), but this seems like pretty good news given how chaotic the individual market continues to be...
Covered California for Small Business Announces Rate Change and Expanded Coverage Choices for 2017
Statewide weighted average rate increase is less than 6 percent.
Blue Shield of California expands to Full PPO network statewide.
Kaiser Permanente moves into Santa Cruz County.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California announced today the rates and expansion plans for its small group health insurance exchange, Covered California for Small Business. The statewide weighted average rate increase is 5.9 percent, for employers and their employees beginning Jan. 1, 2017, which is down from the 7.2 percent increase in 2016.
