Utah

It was in early 2021 that Congressional Democrats passed & President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which among other things dramatically expanded & enhanced the original premium subsidy formula of the Affordable Care Act, finally bringing the financial aid sliding income scale up to the level it should have been in the first place over a decade earlier.

In addition to beefing up the subsidies along the entire 100 - 400% Federal Poverty Level (FPL) income scale, the ARPA also eliminated the much-maligned "Subsidy Cliff" at 400% FPL, wherein a household earning even $1 more than that had all premium subsidies cut off immediately, requiring middle-class families to pay full price for individual market health insurance policies.

Here's what the original ACA premium subsidy formula looked like compared to the current, enhanced subsidy formula:

It was in early 2021 that Congressional Democrats passed & President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), which among other things dramatically expanded & enhanced the original premium subsidy formula of the Affordable Care Act, finally bringing the financial aid sliding income scale up to the level it should have been in the first place over a decade earlier.

In addition to beefing up the subsidies along the entire 100 - 400% Federal Poverty Level (FPL) income scale, the ARPA also eliminated the much-maligned "Subsidy Cliff" at 400% FPL, wherein a household earning even $1 more than that had all premium subsidies cut off immediately, requiring middle-class families to pay full price for individual market health insurance policies.

Here's what the original ACA premium subsidy formula looked like compared to the current, enhanced subsidy formula:

Utah's preliminary 2025 individual and small group market rate filings are listed below. They launched a handy new website specifically dedicated to insurance filings, which is nice to see.

Unless there's a change in the final/approved rates, unsubsidized individual market plan premiums are increasing by around 10.4% in 2025, while small group plans will go up 8.9% on average.

It's worth noting that Cigna Health & LIfe is pulling out of Utah's individual market next year, while Angle Insurance Co. is dropping out of the small group market.

It's also worth noting that virtually all of Utah's individual market enrollment appears to be on exchange this year...over 95% of it! It's slightly lower than that since I don't know how many enrollees Cigna has at the moment, but they only reported around 3,000 effectuated enrollees as of a year earlier, so unless they had massive growth this year (which could have happened, I suppose), it would only knock the on exchange percentage down a point or two.

Cigna notwithstanding, this means that in Utah:

• 95.3% of all indy market enrollees are on exchange
• 91.4% of all indy market enrollees are subsidized

via the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS):

CMS Approves State Plan Amendments Extending Postpartum Coverage in Nevada

May 3: CMS marked another important maternal health milestone by approving Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) postpartum coverage extensions in Nevada, an opportunity made possible through the American Rescue Plan (ARP). Nationally, people across 46 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S.V.I. now have access to Medicaid and CHIP coverage for a full 12 months following pregnancy — up from just 60 days before the ARP.

via the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS):

Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), announced Utah’s extension of comprehensive coverage for postpartum individuals for a full 12 months through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).

Originally posted 8/18/23

Utah's preliminary 2024 individual and small group market rate filings are listed below. They launched a handy new website specifically dedicated to insurance filings, which is nice to see.

Unless there's a change in the final/approved rates, unsubsidized individual market plan premiums are increasing by around 11.4% in 2023, while small group plans will go up 10.5% on average (caveat: I had to estimate the actual enrollment numbers for two of the small group carriers, so the weighted average may be slightly off). Both market hikes are significantly higher rate increases than they were last year.

I should note that both Aetna and Imperial Health appear to be newly entering the Utah individual market next year.

UPDATE 10/04/23: The Utah Insurance Dept. has published approved rates for all individual & small group market carriers with one exception (Molina is still listed as "submitted," but they only have 0.6% of the total market anyway so any dramatic change to their final rates would be a rounding error at most statewide).

Overall most of the filings were accepted as is, although a couple saw significant changes: BridgeSpan had their 6.7% increase nearly doubled to 12.1%, while Regence BCBS was shaved down slightly, from 9.2% to 8.8%.

(Note: Most of this is a shortened version of my post from seven weeks ago...with a pretty important update at the end):

Just over a year ago, Bright HealthCare, which was only founded in 2016, announced that they were dramatically expanding their operations around the U.S.:

Bright HealthCare Expands Affordable Plans in 42 New Markets Next Year Including in Texas, Georgia, Utah and Virginia

Sherman, set the Wayback Machine to 2015:

MICHIGAN: Another One (Mostly) Bites The Dust; 12th CO-OP Drops Off Exchange, May Go Belly-Up

It appears that East Lansing-based Consumers Mutual Insurance of Michigan could wind down operations this year as it is not participating in the state health insurance exchange for 2016.

But officials of Consumers Mutual today are discussing several options that could determine its future status with the state Department of Insurance and Financial Services, said David Eich, marketing and public relations officer with Consumers Mutual.

Consumers Mutual CEO Dennis Litos said: "We are reviewing our situation (financial condition) with DIFS and should conclude on a future direction this week.”

While Eich said he could not disclose the options, he said one is “winding down” the company, which has 28,000 members, including about 6,000 on the exchange.

Utah's preliminary 2022 individual and small group market rate filings are listed below. They launched a handy new website specifically dedicated to insurance filings, which is nice to see.

Unless there's a change in the final/approved rates, unsubsidized individual market plan premiums are increasing by around 6.0% in 2023, while small group plans will go up 6.7% on average.

UPDATE 10/12/22: It looks like every preliminary rate filing was accepted by the state insurance regulators as is, on both the individual and small group market.

On Monday, I noted that after NPR reporters NPR reporters Geoff Brumfiel and Daniel Wood updated their report on the partisan divide regarding COVID-19 vaccination and death rates to include my consultation regarding their analysis and methodology, I learned that they had disregarded my warning about using Johns Hopkins University data for Florida because JHU's data for Florida specifically was still reflecting data as of June 3rd:

As I had noted back in September: