The good news about New Hampshire's health insurance market is that they're the only state without its own ACA exchange which produces publicly-accessible monthly reports on individual on-exchange market enrollment. The bad news is that they don't seem to publish the actual rate filings in an easy-to-read format, which means I'm left with the federal rate review website. The problem with that is the rate filings are mostly heavily redacted, making it impossible to get the total enrollment data.
Back in August I was able to postestimated preliminary average 2023 rate changes for Texas' individual market. I emphasize "estimated" because the state insurance dept. website isn't helpful and even the filings found in the SERFF database only include actual enrollment data for about half of the dozen or so insurance carriers offering policies on the TX indy market. For the remaining carriers I had to use my best guesstimate of what the market share of each was in order to come up with a weighted average increase, which turned out to be +8.8% for unsubsidized enrollees.
Back in September, Covered California announced that the weighted average individual market premium increases for 2023 (for unsubsidized enrollees) will be around 5.6%, down slightly from the 6.0% average requested by carriers. However, the press release, besides not including a carrier-level breakout of the rate hikes, also didn't say anything about California's small group market.
The small group market rates are unchanged; the requested premium changes, which have an unweighted average hike of 7.2%, were approved as is. On the individual market, there were some slight reductions from requested rates for BCBS of KC, Sunflower/Ambetter, Medica, Oscar and US Health & Life. As a result, the semi-weighted average increase will be about a point lower (+7.2% vs. +8.3%).
I say semi-weighted because I only have the actual enrollment data for some of the carriers; for the others, I assumed equal enrollment for each of the remaining carriers based on the total statewide individual market size. I may be off on this, but it shouldn't move the needle too much if I am.
Also worth noting: UnitedHealthcare is joining the Kansas individual market for 2023.
The Reinsurance Program, Colorado Option and federal assistance will save people money on health care.
DENVER - The Colorado Division of Insurance (DOI), part of the Department of Regulatory Agencies, has released the approved health insurance plans and premium information for 2023 for individual plans (for people who don’t get their insurance from an employer) and small group plans (for small employers with 2- 100 employees).
Because of the innovative programs the Polis-Primavera administration – in partnership with the legislature – has championed over the last three years, Coloradans can save $326 million statewide on individual health insurance plans for 2023. The Reinsurance Program, the Colorado Option and the DOI’s rate review process are driving substantial savings for the 2023 plan year.
The South Carolina Insurance Dept. has posted their final/approved 2023 rate filings for both the Individual and Small Group markets. Unlike the preliminary filings, which they didn't make easily available, the final filings are pretty clear cut. They don't include the enrollment data for each carrier, but most of that is available via the the federal Rate Review website and/or SERFF databases for the indy market. For the small group market, I was only able to find the number of policyholders, not actual enrollees, although that should still give a fairly close approximation to the relative market share.
On the individual market, average rates are going up around 7.3%, which is down a solid amount from the originally-requested average rate hike of 10.4%. The biggest news on SC's indy market is that Bright Health is dropping out (as they are everywhere else as well), while Cigna and Select Health are joining the ACA exchange.
On the small group market it doesn't look like there are any changes to who's participating. The average rate increase is 4.6%, which is actually down a bit from the 5.5% requested average (mostly due to Blue Cross/Blue Choice having their increases shaved down).
Tennessee has posted their approved 2023 individual & small group market health insurance rate filings. For the most part they're fairly straightforward: The individual market is looking at average rate increases of around 8.5% (down a bit from the 9% average via preliminary filings), while the small group market averages around +3.0% overall.
The biggest news here is Bright Health is dropping out of Tennessee's markets. Bright's withdrawal will leave roughly 50,000 Tennessee residents to have to either manually pick a different plan from a different carrier or be automatically "mapped" to a similar plan to what they have now...via a different carrier.
West Virginia has by far the highest average unsubsidized premiums in the country (Wyoming and Alaska rank 2nd and 3rd). It also has the second smallest individual market in the U.S. (Alaska has the smallest), with just over 22,000 West Virginians enrolled in ACA policies statewide.
For 2023, they're looking at roughly a 5% rate hike for those who don't qualify for ACA subsidies. The good news is that, being West Virginia, the vast majority of those enrolled (95%) do qualify for financial help.
WV's ACA-compliant small group market is even smaller, just ~14,000 people; they're looking at roughly a 3.4% average rate hike next year.
10/18/2022 The Alabama Department of Insurance (ALDOI) has approved the final 2023 premium rates for the Affordable Care Act Individual Market in Alabama. The rates will be effective on January 1, 2023. The three carriers in the Alabama individual market are Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama (BCBS), UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company (UHC), and Celtic Insurance Company (CIC). In general, rates for BCBS decreased 0.3 percent, and rates for UHC increased 14.9 percent. CIC is new to the Affordable Care Act Individual Market in Alabama in 2023. The actual rates and the supporting material may be found by clicking on the links below.
Consumers with an insurance question may contact the Alabama Department of Insurance, Consumer Services Division, using the contact information below. The Department also maintains a Live Chat feature for consumers at our website at www.aldoi.gov. A representative will be happy to help answer your questions.
Florida state law gives private corporations wide berth as to what sort of information, which is easily available in some other states, they get to hide from the public under the guise of it being a "trade secret."
In the case of health insurance premium rate filing data, that even extends to basic information like "how many customers they have."
