2020 Rate Changes

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:

  • How many effectuated enrollees they have enrolled in ACA-compliant individual market policies;
  • What their average projected premium rate increase (or decrease) is for those enrollees (assuming 100% of them renew their existing policies, of course); and
  • Ideally, a breakout of the reasons behind those rate changes, since there's usually more than one.
  • In 2015, I projected that the overall average rate increases for 2016 would be roughly 12-13% nationally. It turned out to be around 11.6%.
  • In 2016, I projected that the overall average rate increases for 2017 would be roughly 25% nationally. It turned out to be around 22%, but that only included on-exchange Silver plan enrollees across 44 states (I included all metal levels, both on and off exchange, across all 50 states).
  • In 2017, I projected that the overall average rate increases for 2018 would be around 29% nationally, and that 60% of that would be due specifically to deliberate Trump Administration actions designed to sabotage the ACA markets. It turned out to be around 28% nationally.
  • In 2018, I projected that the overall average rate increases for 2019 would be around 2.8% nationally, and that premiums would have dropped around 5.4% on average if not for the ACA's individual mandate being repealed & short-term & association plans being expanded. Hhealthcare think tank Avalere Health came to almost the exact same estimates on the actual rate changes, while Brookings Institute healthcare analyst Matthew Fiedler concluded that unsubsidized ACA individual market premiums would indeed have dropped by around 4.3% nationally on average in the absence of mandate repeal and expansion of #ShortAssPlans.

In other words, I've had a pretty good track record of accurately projecting average premium increases for the upcoming year for four years in a row. With that in mind, below you'll find a table tracking the state-by-state preliminary and final rate changes for the 2020 ACA-compliant individual (and sometimes small group) markets. Scroll down for individual state entry links.

This just in from the Idaho Insurance Dept:

Individual Medical Plans

The Department of Insurance received preliminary 2020 health plan information from insurance carriers on June 1 and began reviewing 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 2020 increase information. The public is invited to provide comments on the rate changes. Please send any comments to Idaho Department of Insurance.

NOTE: This post re. North Carolina's 2020 individual market premium rate change is incomplete because it only includes one of the three carriers participating in NC's market (Blue Cross Blue Shield of NC). The rate change requests for Cigna and Centene haven't been released yet.

Normally I'd wait until I had data for the other two as well, but BCBSNC held around 95% of the state's Individual Market share last year, with Cigna holding the other 5% (Centene was a new entry to the market, so they didn't have any of it). I don't know how much the relative share has changed this year, but I'm assuming that BCBSNC still holds the lion's share of the total.

That being said, BCBSNC just posted their own preliminary rate filing summary on their corporate blog:

Blue Cross NC is decreasing 2020 Affordable Care Act (ACA) rates by an average of 5.2 percent for plans offered to individuals and an average of 3.3 percent for plans offered to small businesses with one to 50 employees. With this reduction, we take 238 million steps towards more affordable care in North Carolina.

The good news about the Ohio Insurnace Dept. is that they make it easy to find out which insurance carriers are participating on the ACA market and what the overall, weighted premium change is statewide.

The bad news is that they don't break out that statewide average by carrier rate changes, nor do they make it easy to find out the actual enrollment in the individual carriers...even on the SERFF database, they don't post the relevant filing forms until much later in the year, and tend to redact the critical data.

Still, the big number in the Buckeye State is a 7.0% average premium decrease year over year for 2020:

Ohio Health Insurance Exchange 2020

This Just In from the Pennsylvania Insurance Dept:

Insurance companies offering individual and small group health insurance plans are required to file proposed rates with the Pennsylvania Insurance Department for review and approval before plans can be sold to consumers. The Department reviews rates to ensure that the plans are priced appropriately -- that is, they are neither excessive (too high) nor inadequate (too low) -- and are not unfairly discriminatory.

Rates reflect estimates of future costs, including medical and prescription drug costs and administrative expenses, and are based on historical data and forecasts of trends in the upcoming year. In its review, the Department considers these factors, as well as factors such as the insurer's revenues, actual and projected profits, past rate changes, and the effect the change will have on Pennsylvania consumers. For more information on this process, watch our How Are Health Insurance Rates Decided?Opens In A New Window video.

Last month I noted that Maine's Bureau of Professional & Financial Regulation released their preliminary 2020 rate filings for the Individual and Small Group markets. At the time, the three carriers on their Indy market were requesting average rate increases of around 4.7% next year.

Well, the final/approved rate changes won't happen for another month or so, but it looks like the carriers themselves have sliced their unsubsidized 2020 rates down of their own volition:

Maine’s three providers of individual health insurance on the Affordable Care Act marketplace have revised their rate requests for 2020, significantly lowering their projected rates.

Previously, the insurers had sought modest average rate increases of 1 percent to 8 percent. Under the revised filings, two of the three insurers are now requesting decreases for individual plans, and the other is seeking an increase of less than 1 percent.

The Arkansas Insurance Dept. just posted their preliminary 2020 individual and small group market premium rate change requests. For the most part it's pretty straightforward: Individual market premiums are increasing about 2.3% statewide, while small group plans are going up 6.5% overall.

However, there's two interesting things to note about Arkansas' individual market: First, unlike most states where over 70% of enrollees do so through the ACA exchange, in Arkansas it's more like 20%, with nearly 80% are enrolled off-exchange. The main reason for this is the state's unique "Private Option" Medicaid expansion waiver, in which around 252,000 residents who would otherwise be enrolled in Medicaid itself are instead enrolled in enhanced ACA individual market policies...with the state paying for their premiums.

I wasn't expecting my analysis of Rhode Island's 2020 ACA premium changes to be of any particular interest; it's a small state with only two carriers offering individual market policies, after all, so there's not usually much to it.

When I last checked in on the Ocean State (seriously...that's their official slogan for whatever reason), I had noted that the state Senate had passed a bill (2019-S 0738A) which, if signed into law, would lock in most of the ACA's "Blue Leg" protections, including guaranteed issue, community rating, removal of annual/lifetime coverage caps and so forth.

A week or so ago I reported that Covered California had released their preliminary 2020 ACA individual market premium rate changes, with a record-low 0.8% average increase statewide. They detailed in the report how the combination of reinstating the ACA's individual mandate penalty and using that funding to provide additional financial subsidies to the enrollees lowered the average rate increases from 4.0% to 0.8%, saving unsubsidized enrollees around 3.2 points or $167/year on average.

Today, CoveredCA has posted more details about some of the specifics:

Covered California Releases Regional Data Behind Record-Low 0.8 Percent Rate Change for the Individual Market in 2020

Over a month ago, I posted an analysis of the preliminary 2020 premium rate filings for the ACA Individual Market here in Michigan based on the actual filing forms from each of the 11 carriers participating in the market.

At the time, I concluded that the weighted average change marketwide was a 1.95% reduction in premiums compared to 2019, for around 281,000 Michiganders on the Indy market. This would mean roughly a $10 average premium reduction per unsubsidized enrollee per month, or $116 per year:

This just in via the Colorado Dept. of Insurance:

Polis Administration Projects 18.2% Average Decrease in Premiums for Individual Health Insurance Plans in 2020

Reducing health care costs has been a top priority for Polis.

DENVER (July 16, 2019) – Today, the Colorado Division of Insurance (DOI), part of the Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA), announced that for the first time ever, Colorado health insurance companies that sell individual plans (for people who do not get their health insurance from an employer or government program) expect to reduce premiums by an average of 18.2 percent (-18.2%) over their 2019 premiums, provided the reinsurance program is approved by the federal government. These are the health insurance plans available on the Connect for Health Insurance Exchange, the state’s health exchange made possible by the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

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