Hawaii only has two carriers participating in the Individual health insurance market. For 2020, they're reducing unsubsidized premiums by 1.7%.
COVID-19 isn't listed as a factor at all by either of the carriers, nor by any of the small group carriers in Hawaii either...which makes total sense since Hawaii has the lowest rate of COVID-19 infection in the country.
The small group carriers are requesting a weighted average reduction of 2% as well, although one of the four doesn't have their actual rate change or current enrollment available yet, so this could change.
However, it's a bit overly cumbersome: It stretches out over 5 full pages, and includes columns for Standalone Dental Plans as well as a bunch of info regarding the Small Group Market.
To that end, I've cleaned up/simplified the 2021 Submission Deadline table considerably to only include the individual and small group market dates. I'll be perfectly honest: I'm not quite sure what the distinction is between the "Form/Rate Filings" and the "Binder Deadlines", but the dates tend to match up pretty closely, so I've included all of them below.
The graph below is a linear depiction of how COVID-19 has spread across the state of Florida every day since March 20th.
As you can see, the thick orange line shows the ramping up of testing, the thick blue line is the increase in cases and the thick red line is the (official) rate of fatalities. In order to fit all three measurements on the same graph in a presentable way, the scale is different for each: Tests are per 100 residents; cases are per thousand, and deaths are per ten thousand.
The thinner lines are for Orange County, Florida specifically...and there's a reason for that which I'll explain below.
After all, they were eventually able to eliminate the single least popular provision of the law: The federal individual mandate penalty. Most of the rest of the elements are actually quite popular...and in fact poll after poll finds that the bulk of the public wants those other provisions strengthened, not weakened or eliminated.
IMPORTANT UPDATE: I've been alerted to the fact that I had data entry errors in at least two of the states last weekend (Michigan and Texas). It looks like the sort order got messed up during the data transfer in those states. As a result, at least 2 of the "Top 40" / "Top 100" counties I had listed were wrong. I've deleted the spreadsheets for this week and will triple-check everything for this weekend's weekly update. My apologies for the error.
Now that I've brought all 50 states (+DC & the U.S. territories) up to date, I'm going to be posting a weekly ranking of the 40 U.S. counties (or county equivalents) with the highest per capita official COVID-19 cases and fatalities.
Again, I've separates the states into two separate spreadsheets:
Every year, I spend months painstakingly tracking every insurance carrier rate filing for the following year to determine just how much average insurance policy premiums on the individual market are projected to increase or decrease.
Carriers jump in and out of the market, their tendency repeatedly revise their requests, and the confusing blizzard of actual filing forms which sometimes make it next to impossible to find the specific data I need. The actual data I need to compile my estimates are actually fairly simple, however. I really only need three pieces of information for each carrier:
New Mexico is the latest state to post their preliminary 2021 rate change filings for both the individual and small group markets. There's several key things to note here:
Michigan is the 8th state (by my count) where the insurance carriers have posted their preliminary 2021 premium rate change filings. Every year brings some new twist (in 2018 it was CSR reimbursement payments being cut off; in 2019 it was the zeroing out of the ACA's federal individual mandate penalty; in 2020 it was sort of the repeal of the ACA's health insurer tax (HIT), although that didn't actually happen until after 2020 premiums had already been locked in; and for 2021...it's the COVID-19 pandemic, of course.
I've therefore added a new column for my weighted average rate change spreadsheets. So far only a handful of carriers have tacked on any substantial rate changes due to expected cost increases from testing & treatment of COVID-19 next year...the general rule of thumb seems to be that the added costs are pretty much gonna be cancelled out by reduced claims from non-COVID healthcare services (delayed/cancelled treatments/procedures, etc).
In Red State Oklahoma, Medicaid Expansion Nears 2020 Ballot
A campaign in Oklahoma to expand Medicaid via the ballot box far eclipsed the necessary number of signatures needed to put the measure before voters next November 2020, supporters said Thursday.
The submission of 313,000 signatures to put a constitutional amendment on next year’s general election ballot shattered the required 178,000 needed by the Oklahoma Secretary of State’s office, organizers said. Media reports in Oklahoma said supporters of Medicaid expansion broke a state record when it comes to signatures needed for a statewide ballot initiative.
Over at healthinsurance.org, Louise Norris has already done the work for me in tracking down the preliminary 2021 individual and small group market rate changes for the state of Maine:
Average premiums expected to decrease Maine’s exchange in 2021
Maine’s three individual market insurers filed proposed rates for 2021 in June 2020 (average proposed rate changes are summarized here by the Maine Bureau of Insurance). For the second year in a row, average rates are expected to decrease for 2021:
