2025 Rate Changes

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 2025: BCBS, Medica, NE Total Care and Oscar Health. The unweighted average rate increase being requested is around 4.0%.

For the 4 Small Group market carriers, I do have enrollment data for two of them, but without knowing the other two this isn't terribly useful. The unweighted average rate change being requested there is a 9.3% increase.

Montana used to be very good about providing rate filings in a clear, upfront, transparent manner.

That is no longer the case. Their insurance department website hasn't updated the rate filings page for two years.

The good news is that this year at least, the SERFF database has both the average rate changes as well as the 2024 effectuated enrollment for all carriers on both the individual and small group markets. There's one curiousity, however: For the small group market, UnitedHealthcare shows up in the SERFF database but doesn't appear on the federal Rate Review website.

This doesn't really move the needle much either way, however, since UHC only reports having 250 enrollees anyway.

In any event, individual market carriers are requesting average 8.3% rate increases, while small group carriers are asking for similar 8.6% hikes.

The Missouri Insurance Dept. has posted their preliminary 2025 single risk pool filings for the individual and small group markets.

Not a whole lot stands out to me other than SSM Health Insurance apparently dropping out of the states indy market and a new carrier, Bankers Reserve Life Insurance, newly joining it.

At the same time, the Missouri small group market appears to be losing two carriers (or three depending on your POV): Aetna Health, Aetna Life and Cigna Health & Life are all missing from the 2025 filing summaries as well as the federal Rate Review database.

In any event, the MO individual market is looking at average premium reductions of 1.7% if approved as is, while small group plans are likely to increase by about 7.9% overall.

As always, these are subject to state regulatory review and approval.

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 2025 calendar year.

It's worth noting that Vantage Health Plan appears to be dropping out of the individual market, while All Savers appears to be dropping out of the states small group market (at least, neither one shows up on the Rate Review site or in a SERFF search, anyway).

UPDATE: Thanks to Paul in the comments for noting that Vantage simply changed their name to Primewell last year.

With that in mind, unsubsidized individual market enrollees are looking for unweighted average increases of around 1.8%, while small group carriers are hoping to increase rates by around 9.8% (again, unweighted).

Originally posted 8/09/23; updated 11/07/23

Louisiana's rate filing database is frustrating, because it's both highly-detailed and confusing at the same time.

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 carrier.

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 3.0% lower (in fact, 4 of the 5 carriers on the market next year are dropping average premiums at least slightly)
• Small Group Market: 9.6% higher

It's worth noting, however that Louisiana Healthcare Connections appears to be dropping out of the individual market entirely.

Kansas is another state where the annual rate filings are redacted for many of the carriers; as a result, I can only run a semi-weighted average, and even that is dependent on my estimate of the total individual market size being accurate (my general rule of thumb as long as the enhanced subsidies of the IRA are in place is that about 90% of most states individual market enrollment is on-exchange unless I have data proving otherwise).

With that in mind, the carriers on the Kansas individual market are asking for rate hikes ranging from 2.1% - 24.4%, with an estimated semi-weighted average of 8.9%.

For the small group market, I can't even run a semi-weighted average since I have no idea what the KS small group market size is overall, but the unweighted average rate hikes being requested is 14.9%.

It's also worth noting that unless I'm missing something, US Health & Life Insurance seems to be pulling out of the Kansas individual market, while both Aetna and Cigna seem to be missing from the small group market.

Here's the preliminary 2025 ACA individual and small group market rate filings. Unfortunately, the effectuated enrollment isn't available this year for the carriers in either market, so I can only offer unweighted averages...which include a 3.1% reduction on the indy market and a 6.9% increase for small group enrollees.

the only other noteworthy item is that it looks like HealthPartners UnityPoint is dropping out of Iowa's small group market next year...but with 9 other carriers participating there's still plenty of options for that population.

Georgia's health department doesn't publish their annual rate filings publicly, but they don't hide them either; I was able to acquire pretty much everything via a simple FOIA request. Huge kudos to the GA OCI folks!

Georgia's individual market has grown dramatically over the past two years; it went from 660,000 in 2023 to 813,000 people in 2024 to a stunning 1.3 MILLION this year. The weighted average rate increase for unsubsidized enrollees will go up 9.9% if state regulators approve all of the carrier requests as is.

via Covered California: (this is actually from nearly a month ago; somehow I missed it at the time):

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Covered California announced its health plans and rates for the 2025 coverage year with a preliminary weighted average rate increase of 7.9 percent.

The rate change can be attributed to many factors, including a continued rise in health care use, increases in pharmacy expenditures, the rising cost of care, labor shortages and other issues affecting the health care industry.

Because of the robust financial help available to Covered California enrollees, many will see a small impact, if any, to their monthly cost. Covered California, with the support of Gov. Newsom and the California Legislature, has worked to reduce the impact of increased consumer costs in 2025 by providing more support for its state-enhanced cost-sharing reduction (CSR) program, which will eliminate deductibles and lower the cost of care for over a million Californians.

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, which sometimes posts average rate requests which don't match up with the actual filings...but it's gonna have to do here. 

With these two data sources in hand, New Hampshire's individual market carriers are asking for a weighted average increase of 4.8%. It's important to note that Anthem Health Plans and Matthew Thornton Health Plan are listed as separate carriers on the federal Rate Review website (with separate average rate requests), but on the state's monthly report, they're merged into a single listing.

With no way of knowing what the actual enrollment breakout is between these two, I'm assuming a 50/50 split.