This is about as minor a rate filing update as I've had, but I'm posting it separately in the interest of completeness.
Insurance carriers in my home state of Michigan originally submitted their requested 2019 ACA individual market rate filings back in June. At the time, the average premium increase being asked for was pretty nominal, around 1.7%, with a smaller-than-average #ACASabotage factor of around 5% due to the ACA's Individual Mandate being repealed and #ShortAssPlans being expanded by the Trump Administration.
Today, just two days before the 2019 Open Enrollment Period actually begins, the Michigan Dept. of Financial Services finally posted the approved 2019 rate filings...and practically nothing ended up changing.
Last year there was an unprecedented amount of uncertainty and chaos surrounding the Affordable Care Act. On the one hand, you had Congressional Republicans desperately attempting to repeal the ACA altogether a good half a dozen times...and coming within a single "thumbs down" of doing so at one point.
At the same time, you had Donald Trump screaming into the wind about doing everything he could to simultaneously cause the ACA exchanges to "blow up" or "implode", depending on the tweet of the day, culminating in him finally pulling the plug on Cost Sharing Reduction reimbursement payments.
There was practically no change whatsoever between the rate changes requested by Louisiana carriers for the 2019 ACA individual market and the rates approved by the state insurance regulators. However, it's still good to be able to lock in the official rates just ahead of the Open Enrollment Period itself, including the individual filing data.
Overall, unsubsidized premiums should drop around 6.5%, which is good news...except that, once again, if it weren't for the ACA's individual mandate being repealed and #ShortAssPlans being expanded by the Trump Administration, I estimate they'd be dropping by another 9.3%, give or take, for a total premium reduction of more like 15.8% on average.
At $649/month full-price on average this year, that means the average unsubsidized enrollee will be paying somewhere around $724 more apiece next year due to those factors.
OK, this is a pretty minor update, but in the interest of completeness I should post it.
In mid-September, the Washington State insurance commissioner posted the approved 2019 average ACA individual market premium changes for carriers statewide, coming in at 13.8% overall.
The only problem is that the report only included the seven on-exchange ACA market carriers. The four carriers which offer off-exchange policies (which are pretty much identical and are part of the same risk pool, but don't qualify for tax credits) weren't included. They make up roughly 23% of Washington State's total individual market.
Today, just a few days before Open Enrollment begins, the WA Insurance Commissioner posted the complete approved rate change information. The overall average has dropped slightly, to 13.6%:
Eleven insurers approved to sell 74 plans in Washington's 2019 individual market
13.57 percent average rate increase approved
It isn't often that I write about anything Oklahoma-related, and it's rarer still that I post good news out of the...um..."labor omnia vincit" state (that's their slogan, I looked it up...), so today's a rare day indeed.
Here's what he's talking about: The massive searchable/filterable database which CMS maintains every year which includes pretty much every conceivable detail about every ACA-compliant health insurance policy available from every carrier in every region of all 39 states whose ACA exchanges are hosted on HealthCare.Gov (it doesn't include the 12 states which operate their own ACA exchanges, unfortunately).
Last year I wrote a LOT about Silver Loading and Silver Switching for 2018...basically, the way which ACA individual market enrollees can save hundreds or even thousands of dollars on their 2018 insurance policies by taking advantage--perfectly legally and ethically--of the unusual pricing of different metal level policies this year.
The short version is this: Due to the way the ACA's tax credit formula works, Donald Trump's attempt at sabotaging the ACA exchanges by cutting off Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) reimbursement payments to insurance carriers actually (partly) backfired on him, resulting in an unusual situation in which several million subsidized enrollees ended up benefitting from the pricing fallout, while millions of unsubsidized enrollees ended up being hurt by it...but other unsubsidized enrollees ended up being able to avoid being hurt by switching to a special off-exchange Silver plan (thus, the "Silver Switch").
OK, I had kind of forgotten about this. Back in early June, insurance carriers in Pennsylvania submitted their preliminary 2019 ACA market premium change requests. At the time, they averaged around a 4.9% increase statewide, which seemed pretty impressive under the circumstances.
Then, late July, the PA insurance department issued a press release stating that state regulators had modified the 2019 requests, and that the new, revised average was much lower...a mere 0.7% average rate hike. However, the individual carriers as well as the insurance department made it very clear that this nominal increase included a 6 point rate increase to account for the ACA's individual mandate being repealed and the Trump Administration's expansion of non-ACA compliant short-term and association plans.
However, the DC exchange board was also working quickly in an attempt to counter the Trump Administration's #ACASabotage factors, by voting to restrict short-term plans, to lock in DC's Open Enrollment Period at a full 3 months as in years past, and to reinstate the ACA's individual mandate penalty at the local level.
