2017 Rate Request Early Look: Idaho

The Idaho insurance department website has made this really easy for me. Most states either don't provide the requested rate hikes at all (forcing me to track them down via a slew of SERFF filing forms) or, if they do provide the rate requests, they don't provide the actual enrollment numbers for each carrier, making it very difficult to run a weighted average.

In the case of Idaho, they don't give the enrollment numbers, but they've already ran the average and posted the weighted number for me! Better yet, they've done this for both the Individual and Small Group markets:

INDIVIDUAL MARKET:

SMALL GROUP MARKET:

OK, the individual market is, sadly, the same high-20's average which I'm seeing in many other states for next year. Again, I don't know the hard enrollment numbers, but since the statewide average is 27% and the highest carrier requests are 28% and 32%, it suggests that Blue Cross and SelectHealth have the lion's share of the market.

Idaho also does something else which I haven't seen before, but which is kind of handy: It shows you exactly how much each carrier profited or lost in the first quarter of the year, to help put their requests into some context. Of course, this is only for 1 quarter, and it's my understanding that it's the fourth quarter of the year when most people schedule their most expensive procedures (to max out their deductibles if they haven't already done so), so it's not ideal, but it's still better than nothing.

The small group market is, as with most of the other states I've analyzed, far more stable: Only a 5% average rate hike requested, with several carriers cutting their premiums.