North Dakota

Much has been written by myself and others (especially the Kaiser Family Foundation) about the fact that millions of uninsured Americans are eligible for ZERO PREMIUM Bronze ACA healthcare policies.

I say "Zero Premium" instead of "Free" because there's still deductibles and co-pays involved, although all ACA plans also include a long list of free preventative services from physicals and blood screenings to mammograms and immunizations with no deductible or co-pay involved.

If you have a fairly healthy year, you really could go the entire year without paying a dime in healthcare costs while still taking advantage of many of these free services, and also having the peace of mind that in a worst-case scenario, at least you wouldn't go bankrupt. Not perfect, but a lot better than going bare especially since you wouldn't pay a dime in premiums.

A couple of weeks ago I posted North Dakota's preliminary 2021 individual & small group policy premium rate filings, which averaged a 7.4% increase on the individual market and a 4.1% unweighted average increase for the small group market.

A few days ago, the North Dakota Insurance Dept. posted the final/approved rate hikes, including several significant reductions over those requested:

BISMARCK, N.D. – Insurance Commissioner Jon Godfread today released the approved health insurance rates for both individual and small group plans for 2021, and encourages consumers to start early, stay informed and shop around.

Here's North Dakota's 2021 individual & small group market rate change filings. Note that all of the small group filings are heavily redacted and the memos aren't available in the SERFF database for any of them, so I can't run a weighted average and had to go with the unweighted 5.0% increase.

For the individual market, Blue Cross Blue Shield's memo isn't available, so I had to plug in an estimate based on the average 2019 enrollment; I'm assuming it's fairly close to that this year as well. Weighted average on the indy market is a 7.4% increase.

Last month I noted that North Dakota had posted their requested 2020 premium rate change requests, including two different filings: One assuming the states' ACA Section 1332 Reinsurance Waiver didn't get approved, the other assuming it did. It was pretty unlikely that their waiver would be denied, however, so the general assumption was that they'd be looking at a significant rate reduction, especially compared with the rate increase if the waiver didn't go through.

At the time, I didn't have access to the actual enrollment figures for the three carriers on North Dakota's individual market, so I had to go with an unweighted average rate change, and came up with a drop of 7.9%.

Since then, however, the state regulators have reviewed and approved the 2020 premium changes, and thanks to Louise Norris, I don't even have to dig up the enrollment data:

Average rates dropping by nearly 6% in 2020 (without reinsurance, they’d have increased by nearly 15%)

MLR rebate payments for 2018 are being sent out to enrollees even as I type this. The data for 2018 MLR rebates won't be officially posted for another month or so, but I've managed to acquire it early, and after a lot of number-crunching the data, I've recompiled it into an easy-to-read format.

But that's not all! In addition to the actual 2018 MLR rebates, I've gone one step further and have taken an early crack at trying to figure out what 2019 MLR rebates might end up looking like next year (for the Individual Market only). In order to do this, I had to make several very large assumptions:

Unfortunately, North Dakota is another state where the carriers have redacted their rate filings. I was able to garner some info about one of the three carriers participating in the Individual Market next year: Medica's filing redaction wasn't done properly, so I was able to extract that they're looking at medical trend of 7.7%, a morbidity reduction of 1.5%, a 2.3% increase due to the reinstatement of the ACA's insurer fee...and a 20% reduction due to the implementation of the state's reinsurance program, which I first reported on last fall and followed up with this spring.

Sure enough, a week or so ago it was made official:

Last September I noted that North Dakota was considering going one of two ways when it comes to making a major change in their individual insurance market: EIther joining over a half-dozen other states in pushing for a reinsurance program (which I strongly support doing), or going the other way and starting to offer weaker policies without some ACA protections the way states like Idaho, Tennessee, Iowa and Kansas either already do or are in the process of doing.

Fortunately, it looks like they ultimately decided to go the former route after all:

A few minutes ago I posted about North Dakota's approved 2019 rate hikes, which are coming in at a mere 3.2% on average (but which would likely be dropping nearly 20 points without both last and this year's #ACASabotage factors).

However, there was something else equally interesting included in the ND DOI press release: Like Montana and several other states, North Dakota is also considering jumping onboard the state-based reinsurance waiver train!

As I noted last month when I first analyzed the requested 2019 rates for North Dakota insurers, ND was somewhat unique last year in that it was one of only two states (the other was Vermont) which didn't tack on any extra premium increases for 2018 to account for the lost Cost Sharing Reduction reimbursement revenue after Donald Trump cut off those payments last October.

This led to one of North Dakota's three carriers, Medica, dropping off the ACA exchange altogether, though they still ended up enrolling a few hundred people directly via the off-exchange market.

North Dakota was one of only two states (the other one was Vermont) which didn't allow their insurance carriers to add any additional premium load into their 2018 rates to account for Donald Trump's cut-off of Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) reimbursement payments.

In direct response to this, Medica Health Plans dropped out of the ND on-exchange individual market this year to avoid taking the CSR hit. They hung around the off-exchange market, however, and therefore still have about 600 enrollees in the state.

As a result of this, my estimated impact of ACA sabotage efforts by the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans has to include the factors from both 2017 and 2018: Cost-Sharing Reduction cut-off (9%) as well as Mandate Repeal and Short-Term Plan expansion (13.8%).