Well I'll be damned: RWJF confirms my 12-13% national weighted avg. rate hike estimate!

Wed, 12/16/2015 - 10:46am

Some Guy, October 2015:

With all that in mind, as of October 25th, no matter how I slice it, the national weighted average increase for 2016 seems to be somewhere between 12% - 13%.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Today:

HIX Compare datasets examine every marketplace plan from 2015 to 2016.

This is the only nationally comprehensive, public dataset that includes information on all plans offered in the health insurance marketplaces. The data allow people to examine everything from who buys marketplace plans, to what the plans cover and how much they cost. HIX Compare includes information on premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, as well as cost-sharing requirements for primary care and specialist visits, prescription drugs, emergency room services and inpatient and outpatient visits for all plans across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. RWJF and Manatt also re-issued the 2015 HIX Compare dataset and expanded it to include Gold and Bronze plans, enabling comparisons between 2015 and 2016.

A mountain of data, much of which goes way beyond the scope of my own analysis. However, here's what it boils down to:

And when you add those all up, here's what it comes down to:

Bear in mind that 67% of exchange enrollees selected Silver policies this year. 22% selected Bronze, 7% selected Gold and only 4% selected either Platinum or Catastrophic plans. Therefore, a weighted breakdown (dividing into 96% of the total instead of 100%) would give roughly:

  • Bronze: 22.9% x 12.6% = 0.0266112
  • Silver: 69.8% x 11.3% = 0.078874
  • Gold: 7.3% x 13.8% = 0.010074
  • Total: 0.1155592 = 11.6%

Besides the missing 4% Platinum/Catastrophic rates, the only other caveat is that this is for exchange-based policies only; it doesn't include off-exchange plans. However, seeing how most of those are included in the same risk pool, I'm pretty sure that even with those included the overall average is still somewhere in the 11-14% range.

2016 Rate Increases

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