ADDENDUM to the 2017 Average Rate Hike Project

Last week I noted that with 41 states accounted for and the 2017 Open Enrollment Period quickly bearing down on everyone, it was time to pull the plug on my 2017 Average Rate Hike project and move on. I had come up with an overall national weighted unsubsidized average rate increase of around 25% for ACA-compliant individual market plans.

However, I also noted that I'd make sure to fill in the approved rates for the remaining 10 states as they came in, for completeness sake...and today, thanks to the HHS Dept. cutting the ribbon on 2017 Window Shopping at HealthCare.Gov, I've also been able to fill in the blanks for five of the remaining states all in one shot (the other five remain elusive).

I'm not going to go into a whole lot of detail here, but I will post the updated spreadsheet tables for all five of these states. Combined, they actually bump the national average closer to 26% (mainly due to Texas's 34.1% average), but bear in mind that the requested average rate hikes for four of the still-missing five states came in well below 20%:

• Louisiana: 26.8% requested
• New Hampshire: 14.5% requested
• Ohio: 13.3% requested
• South Carolina: 17.8% requested
• Virginia: 18.4% requested

I checked to see what would happen if all 5 states have these requests approved of exactly as is...and sure enough, this bumps the national average back down just below the 25% threshold, so there you go.

Anyway, in the interest of completeness, here's the weighted approved full-price averages for Missouri, New Jersey, Texas, West Virginia and Wyoming: