Back in early August, the Pennsylvania Insurance Dept. issued the preliminary rate filings for PA's individual and small group market carriers. At the time, the weighted average rate change being requested on the individual market came to a 2.6% reduction in unsubsidized premiums, while the average small group plan was set to increase by 2.3%.
Last week, the PA DOI issued their final decisions for the long list of carriers on each market, and the changes were...minimal, really. In fact, there was no change at all made to most requested rate filings--only two of the 17 indy market carriers saw a change (reductions for each), and only four of the 21 small group carriers did...and even then, the changes aren't terribly dramatic, just a few percentage points in most cases.
A month later, the RI DOI issued their approved 2021 rate decisions, and made some small tweaks to each. In fact, it looks like there was at least one revision in between, as the new press release lists slightly different numbers for the "preliminary" requests.
In any event, Rhode Island indy & sm. group enrollees will be looking at roughly 4.2% increases on the individual market and 2.6% increases for small group plans:
Way back in June, the Washington Insurance Dept. posted the state's preliminary 2021 preliminary individual & small group market premium rate filings. At the time, the weighted average across all carriers was a 1.8% drop in individual market premiums and a 3.4% increase in small group rates. They also announced the addition of two new carriers to the individual market: Community Health Network and UnitedHealthcare of Oregon. It's important to note that both of these new carriers will only be providing WA's new (quasi) Public Option plans.
Last month, however, the WA DOI announced the approved 2021 rates...for the individual market only, and even then it's missing two carriers which are still under review (Asuris and Health Alliance NW). The missing carriers only have 1,200 enrollees between them, however, so any changes to their requested rates won't move the needle noticeably:
Last night, during the final Presidential debate of 2020, Joe Biden noted:
Biden: Take a look at what New York has done in terms of turning the curve down, in terms of the number of people dying. And I don’t look at this in terms of the way he does, blue states and red states. They’re all the United States. And look at the states that are having such a spike in the coronavirus. They’re the red states, they’re the states in the Midwest, they’re the states in the upper Midwest. That’s where the spike is occurring significantly. But they’re all Americans. They’re all Americans. And what we have to do is say, wear these masks, number one. Make sure we get the help that the businesses need. That money’s already been passed to do that. It’s been out there since the beginning of the summer, and nothing’s happened.
Of course Biden's entire point was that ALL the states are American states, and thus we shouldn't treat them differently depending on their political lean.
Back in late August, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation posted preliminary 2021 individual & small group market rate filings. At the time, the weighted average increases were around 1.8% on the individual market and 3.3% for small group plans. Unfortunately, the actual enrollment data for each carrier is protected as a trade secret in Florida, but the FLOIR did post those weighted statewide averages.
Last month (I'm a bit behind) they posted the approved, final rate filings. The average individual market increases actually went up a bit, which is unusual (usually they're whittled down a few points), while the small group market average is exactly the same (oddly, they had it as 3.3% in August but say that the preliminary average was 3.4% now):
I bravely watched it so you don't have to. Here's the full segment about the ACA and the Trump/GOP lawsuit to strike it down, set to be heard by the Supreme Court on November 10th:
(starting around 15 minutes in):
STAHL: "You promised that there was gonna be a new health package.
TRUMP: "Yeah."
STAHL: "You said it was gonna be great, you said it'll be ready, it'll be here in two weeks, it was gonna be like nothing you've ever seen before...and of course we haven't seen it...so why didn't you develop a health plan?"
TRUMP:"It is developed. It is fully developed, it's going to be announced very soon, when we see what happens with Obamacare, which is not good. And...when we see what happens with Obamacare.
The final/approved rates have recently been posted, and rates in both markets have been significantly cut down: Individual market rates are now averaging a 1.4% reduction while the increase on the small group market is down to 3.8%.
The Alabama Department of Insurance (ALDOI) has approved the final 2021 premium rates for the Affordable Care Act Individual Market in Alabama. The rates will be effective on January 1, 2021. The two carriers in the Alabama individual market are Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama (BCBS) and Bright Health Insurance Company of Alabama (BHIC). In general, rates for BCBS increased five percent and rates for BHIC increased 22 percent. The actual rates and the supporting material may be found by clicking on the links below.
Unfortunately, the linked documents are still redacted and thus don't include the enrollment numbers for Bright (and this press release says nothing about the small group market), but as far as I can tell this doesn't change the averages of either market much from the preliminary filings. Assuming Bright still only has a tiny part of the market, even its 22% average increase doesn't move the needle much.
I've written at least a dozen explainers about what I've termed the Risk Corridor Massacre over the past five years, starting with this one from 2015, and I pray to God that this is the last time I have to do so. Here we go:
The Affordable Care Act made massive changes to many parts of the U.S. healthcare system, but by far the most radical changes were made to the individual, or "non-group" market. This is health insurance for people who aren't covered by Medicare or Medicaid but who also don't have coverage through their employer (or who are self-employed, as I am).
Before the ACA, individual market carriers could cherry-pick their enrollees, either denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions, covering them but charging massively higher rates for doing so, or covering them but exempting themselves from coverage of the very conditions which were most in need of treatment.
The data below comes from the GitHub data repositories of Johns Hopkins University, except 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.
Note that a few weeks ago I finally went through and separated out swing districts. I'm defining these as any county which where the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was less than 6 percentage points either way in 2016. There's a total of 198 Swing Counties using this criteria (out of over 3,200 total), containing around 38.5 million Americans out of over 330 million nationally, or roughly 11.6% of the U.S. population.
With these updates in mind, here's the top 100 counties ranked by per capita COVID-19 cases as of Saturday, October 10th (click image for high-res version). Blue = Hillary Clinton won by more than 6 points; Orange = Donald Trump won by more than 6 points; Yellow = Swing District
