My conclusion was that there's likely to only be one statewide race* where a Republican candidate loses by less than the COVID death margin: The Nevada Senate race where, as of this writing, incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto is trailing Republican challenger Adam Laxalt by less than 800 votes. I estimate that somewhere between 900 - 2,400 more Trump voters than Biden voters died of COVID-19 over the past two years, so if Laxalt ends up losing by less than 2,400 votes, I'd say it's pretty likely that yes, the partisan gap in COVID deaths did indeed play a small but critical role.
According to official CDC data, around 815,000 Americans died of COVID-19 between 10/31/20 - 09/10/22. Of those, I had estimated that perhaps 569,000 had actually voted for Biden or Trump. The total number has tragically risen by around 7,000 more since mid-September, which means the number of 2020 voters who've died is also likely around 4,900 higher.
Nationally, Joe Biden received 81,283,501 votes to Donald Trump's 74,223,975 votes. If COVID impacted both voting blocs at identical rates, you'd normally expect roughly 9.5% more Biden voters to have died of COVID over the past 2 years than Trump voters...or roughly 25,000 more Biden voters.
...over the past few years, the voters of some of those states have decided to take it upon themselves to force their legislators/governors to expand Medicaid anyway, via statewide ballot initiative campaigns:
Unfortunately, Mississippi is one of the states which provided zero useful rate filing data for my purposes (preliminary or final) prior to the 2023 Open Enrollment Period launching, so I had to wait until now to post anything about it.
The only data I have is from the federal Rate Review website, and even the filing forms there are heavily redacted, so all I can put together are unweighted averages for the 2023 calendar year.
With that in mind, unsubsidized individual market enrollees are looking at average increases of around 5.3%, while small group rates are set to go up about 1.6% overall.
They break out the filings not between Individual and small group markets or on- vs. off-exchange policies, but between rate increases over and under 10%. Normally that would be fine, but they also have multiple listings within each market for several carriers; HMO Louisiana, in fact, has 11 entries, each for a different product line, making it tedious and difficult to piece together the weighted average rate change and current enrollment for the carrier as a whole.
Not that any of that matters this year, as they don't appear to have posted any of the ACA-compliant individual market filings there anyway. I had to rely entirely on the federal Rate Review site, and the filings there still don't include enrollment data for most carriers, so the averages below are all unweighted only:
Alaska is also a sparsely populated state with only two carriers on their individual market and four on their small group market. Alaska's insurance department website is useless when it comes to getting rate filings or enrollment data; I had to use the federal Rate Review site to even get the requested rate changes.
Fortunately, Premera Blue Cross includes a summary which lists their enrollment numbers, and with Moda being the only other carrier on the market, I was able to estimate a weighted average (assuming Moda only has around 2,200 enrollees, which seems about right given Alaska's total on-exchange enrollment of roughly 23,000 people).
However, the final/approved rate filings for 2023 are out now that we're into the Open Enrollment Period, and while Premera saw a slight reduction in their rate hike, Moda's are jumping from a 4% increase to a whopping 12.1%. Wow.
I'm pretty sure Wisconsin has the most competitive ACA markets in the country, at least in terms of the sheer number of insurance carriers offering policies on both the individual (15) and small group (20) markets.
The bad news is that it was extremely difficult to acquire Wisconsin's 2023 rate filings prior to the actual Open Enrollment Period launching this morning.
Overall, individual market premiums for unsubsidized enrollees are going up around 7.7%, while small group market rates are increasing by an unweighted average of 8.9%.
It's worth noting that two carriers (Health Tradition and Network) appear to be dropping out of the small group market, while one of the individual market players, Children's Community Health Plan, is changing their name to...Chorus Community Health Plan for whatever reason.
Massachusetts, which is arguably the original birthplace of the ACA depending on your point of view (the general "3-legged stool" structure originated here, but the ACA itself also has a lot of other provisions which are quite different), has 11 different carriers participating in the individual market. MA (along with Vermont) has merged their Individual and Small Group risk pools for premium setting purposes, so I'm not bothering breaking out the small group market in this case.
Gov. Whitmer Encourages Michiganders to Take Advantage of Savings on New Health Plan Choices During Open Enrollment
November 01, 2022
(LANSING, MICH) Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Michigan Department of Insurance and Financial Services (DIFS) Director Anita Fox are reminding Michiganders that the annual Health Insurance Marketplace open enrollment period begins today and runs through January 15, 2023. With savings still in effect making health insurance more affordable for more Michiganders, new grants for free local help, and more plan options than last year, shopping for health insurance has never been easier.
The good news about New Hampshire's health insurance market is that they're the only state without its own ACA exchange which produces publicly-accessible monthly reports on individual on-exchange market enrollment. The bad news is that they don't seem to publish the actual rate filings in an easy-to-read format, which means I'm left with the federal rate review website. The problem with that is the rate filings are mostly heavily redacted, making it impossible to get the total enrollment data.
