Date: August 10, 2017
Title: Information on Risk Adjustment Methodology and Rate Filing Deadlines
Question: What changes will be made to the risk adjustment methodology to account for recent rating practices that assume issuers of silver-level QHPs facing increased liability for enrollees in cost-sharing reduction plan variations?
For 2017, the weighted, average, unsubsidized (that's critical!) premium rate increase for ACA-compliant individual market healthcare policies was roughly 25% nationally.
There were plenty of reasons for this, including normal inflation/healthcare costs; the discontinuation of two of the three stabilization programs (Reinsurance and Risk Corridors, although the RC program had already been sabotaged a year earlier anyway); correction for under pricing by many carriers in the first couple of years of the ACA exchanges; and, of course, the fact that the ACA exchange risk pool continues to be worse than hoped for in numerous states/counties.
Of course, for the roughly 10 million exchange enrollees who are receiving tax credits, this didn't really impact them much at all:
On average, ACA marketplace consumers receiving tax credits are literally paying exactly the same this year as last year -- $106 per month. pic.twitter.com/WzqA6DsWRN
