Nebraska doesn't even bother listing indy/small group plan rate filings on their own insurance department website...the link goes directly to the federal Rate Review database. The problem with this is that very few filings here are unredacted, which means it's difficult to acquire the policy enrollees for many carriers needed to run a weighted average.
Nebraska has 4 carriers on the individual market for 2024: BCBS, Medica, NE Total Care and Oscar Health. The unweighted average rate increase being requested is around 2.9%.
I also don't have the enrollment for any of the 4 Small Group market carriers. It also looks like Aetna is pulling out of the NE sm. group market, but it might just be that the federal database doesn't have them listed yet The unweighted average rate change being requested there is a 7.9% increase.
UPDATE 11/07/23: No changes were made to the preliminary rate filings for the individual market; for the small group market, Blue Cross Blue Shield had their requested increase shaved down by about 1.7 points.
This one is particularly frustrating. In addition to the filings being listed at the federal Rate Review website, every individual & small group market carrier also has their filings listed via the SERFF databaseand via New Mexico's own internal, searchable rate filing database...and yet I still can't run a weighted average rate change for either market because almost none of the filings at any of these three databases includes the actual enrollment data (Presbyterian on the individual market is the exception).
As a result, I have to once again settle for unweighted averages, which come to +5.6% on the individual market and +7.7% for small group plans.
UPDATED 11/07/23: In the end there were only slight tweaks made to a few carrier requests in either market.
They break out the filings not between Individual and small group markets or on- vs. off-exchange policies, but between rate increases over and under 10%. Normally that would be fine, but they also have multiple listings within each market for several carriers; HMO Louisiana, in fact, has 11 entries, each for a different product line, making it tedious and difficult to piece together the weighted average rate change and current enrollment for the carrier as a whole.
Not that any of that matters this year, as they don't appear to have posted any of the ACA-compliant individual market filings there anyway. I had to rely entirely on the federal Rate Review site, and the filings there still don't include enrollment data for most carriers, so the averages below are all unweighted only:
Individual Market: Around 1.7% higher
Small Group Market: 9.4% higher
It's worth noting, however that Humana is, once again, dropping out of the states' small group market, while Vantage Health Plan appears to be pulling out of both the individual and small group markets in Louisiana.
UPDATE 11/07/23: In the end, every requested rate change was approved as is in both markets.
Unfortunately, South Carolina is another state where they don't make unredacted rate filings available, either on the state insurance dept website, the federal Rate Review websiteor the SERFF database.
As a result, I'm limited to unweighted averages for both the individual and small group markets:
Individual Market: +3.7%
Small Group Market: +8.9%
UPDATED 11/07/23: A couple of interesting modifications were made in the individual market by state regulators: Blue Cross Blue Shield had their rate hikes cut from 6% to 2.7%; BlueCHoice was cut from 2.1% to essentially flat; Cigna will see a 17.8% average increase instead of their requested 10.5% hike; Molina drops from +6.4% to +4.6%; and Select Health, which had planned on reducing premiums by 4.6 points will instead see an average 1.3% increase. Huh.
The good news about the Montana Insurance Dept. is that once the final, approved annual rate changes for the individual and small group markets are released, they're pretty good about posting them in a clear, transparent manner.
The bad news is that they only do so for the final rates, not the preliminary/requested rate filings.
For that, I have to yet again rely on an unweighted average of the rate filings from the federal Rate Review website.
Montana only has three carriers on the indy market and four on the small group market. Of these, Montana Health Co-Op is providing their actual enrollment numbers for both, although one is in a roundabout way. For their individual market filing they state that:
Unfortunately, Mississippi is another state which provides zero useful rate filing data for my purposes (preliminary or final) prior to the Open Enrollment Period launching. The only data I have is from the federal Rate Review website, and even the filing forms there are heavily redacted, so all I can put together are unweighted averages for the 2024 calendar year.
It's worth noting that one of the three UnitedHealthcare divisions appears to be dropping out of Mississippi's small group market, as is Humana (which seems to be pulling out of a lot of small group markets nationally).
With that in mind, unsubsidized individual market enrollees are looking for unweighted average increases of around 2.3%, while small group carriers are hoping to increase rates by around 4.5% (again, unweighted).
UPDATE 11/07/23: In the end, there were virtually no changes made to the final/approved rate changes for either market.
Here's the preliminary 2024 rate filings for Iowa's individual & small-group markets. Unfortunately, I only have the enrollment data for the two smaller carriers on the individual market (and for only one carrier on the small group market). Oddly, while the Iowa Insurance Dept. has detailed rate filings for Medica and Oscar, it doesn't have one for Wellmark posted...and on the small group market, they only have publicly-available filing documentation for two of the eleven carriers.
Interestingly, CareSource Iowa, which only joined the state's individual market this year, appears to be dropping out of it again in 2024...or at least they don't have a listing showing up at RateReview.HealthCare.Gov as of this writing. Similarly, Aetna seems to be dropping out of the small group market as well.
In any event, based on my estimate of Iowa's total ACA-compliant individual market, I can make an educated guess as to the former's weighted average, which should be roughly a 5.7% drop in premiums.
Hawaii only has two health insurance carriers serving the individual market, Hawaii Medical Service Assocation and Kaiser Foundation Health Plan. Both of them have submitted their proposed premium rate filings for 2024; HMSA is asking for a dramatic 12.2% rate hike while Kaiser Foundation is seeking a more modest 3% increase.
Our requested rates include only the amounts needed to cover the expected health care benefits of our members, the cost of administering their benefits, expected Affordable Care Act (ACA) fees, a small charge to help manage the risk of offering benefits to this population, and a small margin that will allow us to continue replenishing HMSA’s reserves.
Covered California’s Health Plans and Rates for 2024: More Affordability Support and Consumer Choices Will Shield Many From Rate Increase
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California announced its health plans and rates for the 2024 coverage year with apreliminary weighted average rate increase of 9.6 percent.
The rate change can be attributed to many factors, including a continued rise in health care utilization following the pandemic, increases in pharmacy costs, and inflationary pressures in the health care industry, such as the rising cost of care, labor shortages and salary and wage increases.
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."
