As I noted when I crunched the numbers for Texas, it's actually easier to figure out how many people would lose coverage if the ACA is repealed in non-expansion states because you can't rip away healthcare coverage from someone who you never provided it to in the first place.
As I noted when I crunched the numbers for Texas, it's actually easier to figure out how many people would lose coverage if the ACA is repealed in non-expansion states because you can't rip away healthcare coverage from someone who you never provided it to in the first place.
(sigh) OK, with three states still missing, you just knew I wouldn't rest until I was able to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. Sometime today, the HHS Dept. finally entered the approved rate hikes for individual makret carriers in two of those states: New Hampshire and Virginia. Louisiana is still AWOL for whatever reason.
It's important to note that sometimes the "Final Rate Increase" percentages listed at RateReview.HealthCare.Gov dont' actually end up matching the approved rate hikes found in the official SERFF databases or even at the state's Dept. of Insurance website. Normally I cross-check all three to make sure nothing weird is going on, but given that it's well past time to move on, I'm relying purely on the RateReview numbers for these states.
With that in mind, here's what it looks like in each:
Virginia was the very first state which I ran an estimated 2017 average requested rate hike for, way back in mid-April.
Since then, aside from Humana pulling out (leaving just 1,800 current enrollees to find a new policy), Virginia's ACA exchange market has actually been remarkably calm; the state somehow managed to escape the wrath of both UnitedHealthcare and Aetna relatively intact, with both carriers still participating in the state's exchange next year as of this writing.
There have, however, been a few other changes to some of the rate filings here and there, found via this updated PDF on the VA DOI website as of July 19th. The overall average requested hikes don't really change much, but do nudge a bit higher than I had previously estimated, from 17.5% to 18.4%:
This is really just a summary of my last 4 posts. I've combed through the SERFF databases for every state which uses the system for rate filings, and while very few have the actual 2017 rate filing requests listed yet, at least 4 of them have official individual market exit letters submitted for 2017 from Jane Rouse, the Product Compliance Process Owner for Humana Insurance Co:
This list may grow as additional state filing data and/or press releases come out from Humana, but assuming these are the only 4 states Humana is bailing on, the news isn't quite as bad as it appears at first.
To be clear, I'm not saying this is a good development; when you combine it with the recent UnitedHealthcare Dropout Odometer it's more of a drip-drip-drip sort of thing. But it isn't disasterous for the exchanges either (at least not yet).
UPDATE: I've been informed by a reliable source that Humana is also dropping out of the individual market in Nevada next year, although I don't have any actual enrollment data there. Humana is not currently participating on the Nevada exchange, however, so any dropped enrollments would be OFF-exchange only. In fact, I'm pretty sure that the only individual market enrollees Humana has in Nevada are grandfathered policies anyway, so the numbers should be pretty nominal there.
It's also worth noting that "grandfathered" enrollees only make up around 11% of Humana's total Virginia individual market as of this spring, which is somewhat higher than my overall ballpark estimate of around 1 million nationally.
As you can see, while the requested rate increases stayed consistent throughout the various updates, the number of enrollees changed dramatically depending on which filing source I used. Case in point: Anthem/HealthKeepers Inc.
The first filing I found for Anthem HealthKeepers made it pretty clear that they're asking for a 15.8% average rate hike next year which is expected to potentially impact up to 122,581 policy holders:
Pretty cut & dry, right? Note that according to the filing that number covers current Anthem HealthKeepers enrollees both on and off the exchange, so it should cover all ACA-compliant policies.
In light of today's confirmation that the average 2016 premium rate increase ended up only being appx. 8% nationally on the individual market (as opposed to the headlines screaming about 40%, 50%, 60%+ rate hikes being "typical"), I've decided to get a jump on the 2017 rate changes. Someone gave me a heads up that Virginia appears to be first out of the gate this year, with requested 2017 rate filings having already been submitted by at least 8 carriers.
Now, for 2016 there are actually 13 carriers offering individual policies in Virginia (although some of these are available off-exchange only). I'm don't know if the 5 missing carriers have decided to drop out of the VA market or if they simply haven't submitted their 2017 filings yet (it looks like in Virginia the carriers technically have until July 15th to get their requests to the HHS Dept. in states which have their own rate review process, but the state itself presumably has an earlier deadline). It's also possible that some additional carriers might join the exchange and/or start offering policies in the state which don't this year.
In any event, here's what I've found so far for Virginia:
Some relatively welcome news going into the home stretch: After a series of ugly (over 20%) rate hike averages from Alabama, Delaware, South Dakota and especially Minnesota, I've just completed the Virginia analysis:
Unlike many other states, there's no guesswork or educated guesses here; the Virginia Dept. of Insurance SERFF filings are quite complete and straightforward, so I have every company providing individual and/or sm. group coverage listed, both on and off the exchange, with the exact average rate changes and affected enrollee numbers for pratically every one of them.
The only exceptions are Piedmont Community Healthcare HMO, whose SERFF filings, oddly, included the enrollee count but not the rate change (usually it's the other way around). In addition, there's a couple of new additions to each (UHC of Mid-Atlantic on the indy market, Federated Mutual on the sm. group market). However, none of these have large enough enrollment numbers to amount to more than a rounding error in either category.
Throughout the long, tortured life of the Affordable Care Act over the past 5+ years, one of the easiest attack points has been to go after the sheer bulk and complexity of the law itself. Whether you're referring to the actual wording of the law (supposedly a whopping 2,700 pages long) or, even worse, the 8-foot tall stack of 10,000 - 20,000 pages of regulations related to "Obamacare", Republican politicians, pundits and talk show hosts have used the immense size of the ACA itself to go after it.
I'm bringing this up now because my big project the past week or two has been to track down the various 2016 policy premium rate change requests for the companies operating both on and off the ACA exchanges in all 50 states (+DC, of course).
So far I've done a pretty good job with OR, WA, CT, MI, DC and VT...and I have partial data for MD & IA.
