North Carolina: Requested 2016 weighted avg. rate hikes: 27.0% (ouch)

IMPORTANT: See this detailed explanation of how I've come up with the following estimated maximum requested weighted average rate increases for this state.

As explained in the first link above, I've still been able to piece together rough estimates of the maximum possible and mid-range requested average rate increase for the North Carolina individual market:

BCBS of NC had previously requested an already-ugly 25.7% average rate hike, but has now asked to bump that up even more, to 34.6% overall.

Again, the full explanation is included here, but to the best of my knowledge, it looks like the companies with rate increases higher than 10% come in at a weighted 28.8% increase, but only make up about 92% of the total ACA-compliant individual market, with several other companies with requested increases of less than 10% (decreases in some cases) making up the other 8%.

Assuming this is accurate, the worst-case scenario is around a 27.3% weighted average rate hike. The "missing" companies are all at 9.9% or lower, so the more likely overall average is around 27.0%.

As noted repeatedly in the explanation, the total market size could be higher (but is unlikely to be lower), while the <10% average could be lower than that. Either of these should result in the overall weighted average being lower than the percentages shown.