Virginia is usually the first state to publicly post their preliminary annual individual/small group market health insurance premium rate filings; historically they've published them as early as mid-April. This year, however, due primarily to the COVID-19 pandemic, I presume, they didn't actually post them until mid-August.
The average premium changes for 2021 on the individual market range from a 13% drop to a 7.7% increase, with the statewide weighted average coming in at around a 7.2% reduction. For the small group market, premiums are increasing by around 3.6% on average, ranging from a 2.4% drop to a 10.9% increase.
Two other noteworthy items: First, Optimum Choice is expanding into VA's individual market (this isn't the same as Optima Health); secondly, VA's indy market has dropped from over 300,000 last year to around 256,000 this year, presumably due to the lingering effects of Medicaid expansion enrollees shifting over from subsidized private plans.
Nolan Finley is the conservative editorial page editor of The Detroit News.
On July 29th, he tweeted this out in response to criticism of the COVID-19 policy recommendations by himself and Michigan Republican legislative leadership:
Florida 20 million population, 6100 deaths. Michigan 10 million population, 6400 deaths. https://t.co/O1tNoyWwB0
Let's take a look at the data, shall we? Here's a graph of official COVID-19 positive test cases and fatalities per capita for both Michigan and Florida. Cases are per 1,000 residents; deaths are per 10,000 in order to make the trendlines more visible:
Covered California Opens New Paths to Coverage for Wildfire Victims and Those Who Lose Their Job or Income During the Pandemic and Recession
Covered California establishes a new special-enrollment period to benefit victims of the 500+ wildfires raging across the state.
In addition, Covered California announced new paths to coverage that will run through the end of 2020, for Californians who have lost employment or income due to the pandemic and resulting recession.
The moves come during ongoing uncertainty in the lives of Californians caused by the wildfires and the continuing fight against COVID-19.
More than 271,000 people have signed up for coverage through Covered California since the exchange’s initial announcement of a special-enrollment period in response to the pandemic.
La versión en español de este Comunicado puede ser descargada en este enlace.
The data below comes from the GitHub data repositories of Johns Hopkins University, execpt for Rhode Island, Utah and Wyoming, which come from the GitHub data of the New York Times due to the JHU data being incomplete for these three states. Some data comes directly from state health department websites.
Here's the top 100 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Saturday, August 22nd (click image for high-res version):
The Indy market is about as simple as it gets since there's only a single carrier offering ACA policies either on- or off-exchange (Highmark BCBS). They're actually cutting premiums on average slightly next year, by half a percent. They state in their summary that "Covid19 is expected to increase claim costs in 2021"...but that's all they have to say about it. The full actuarial memo includes an extensive section about the COVID-19 impact factor...but the numbers/percentages are all redacted:
The Department of Insurance receives preliminary health plan information for the following year from insurance carriers by June 1 and reviews the proposed plan documents and rates for compliance with Idaho and federal regulations. The Department of Insurance does not have the authority to set or establish insurance rates, but it does have the authority to deem rate increases submitted by insurance companies as reasonable or unreasonable. After the review and negotiation process, the carriers submit their final rate increase information. The public is invited to provide comments on the rate changes. Please send any comments to Idaho Department of Insurance.
Back in April, in the midst of the earlier stages of the COVID-19 pandemic sweeping through much of the nation, there was a loud outcry for the various ACA health insurance exchanges, including the federal exchange at HealthCare.Gov which hosts enrollment for over 3 dozen states, to re-open enrollment to anyone who missed the official Open Enrollment Period which had ended several months earlier.
Eventually, twelve of the thirteen state-based exchanges did just that, launching COVID-19-specific Special Enrollment Periods of varying time periods for any resident who would normally be eligible to enroll during Open Enrollment to do so. Many of those SBEs would go on to extend the deadlines of their SEPs by a month...or two months...or even more. As of this writing, in fact, California, Maryland, New York and the District of Columbia are are still offering "open" COVID-19 SEPs.
Way back in May (a lifetime ago), Vermont was among the first states to publicly post their preliminary 2021 rate filings for their combined individual & small group market. At the time, the carriers were requesting an average 6.8% rate increase, and noted that they had no clue how much to tack on to cover themselves for the COVID-19 factor...or to even reduce rates because of it.
This week, the Vermont insurance regulatory board issued their final decisions about both BCBS of Vermont and MVP Health Plan, and cut down on each of their requested increases by several points (h/t Louise Norris for the links):
Hmmm...back in June, the New York Dept. of Financial Services published the preliminary 2021 rate filing requests for the individual & small group markets. As I noted at the time:
Hmmmm....some of these seem suspiciously high, at least as compared to the handful of other states which have released their preliminary requests so far, but we'll have to see...
Republican Senator Cory Gardner is up for re-election this fall, and he's in major trouble. Various polling over the summer has him trailing his Democratic opponent, former CO Governor John Hickenlooper, by around 6 points on average.
