Governor Raimondo’s proposed FY 2020 budget called for the creation of the Health Insurance Market Integrity Fund, which would make available reinsurance payments to health plans to reduce the burden of high cost claims on individual market premiums. According to insurer filings, the enactment of the Health Insurance Market Integrity Fund would reduce the individual market premium requests from 6.6% to -0.4% for BCBSRI and from 5.4% to 1.7% for NHPRI. These insurers’ pricing assumptions are subject to review and verification by OHIC. Table 1 shows the requested individual market rate increases with and without reinsurance.
I've written many times before about how polling on the issue of "Medicare for All" has consistently proven that many Americans are confused about what the phrase actually means.
While a majority of the country keeps saying they want "Medicare for All", poll after poll has shown that a huge chunk of those who say so think it means "Medicare for All Who Want It"...that is, they think it refers to a Public Option, where it's up to them whether their major medical coverage would be public or private. This is true even among Democrats, who obviously support the concept in higher numbers than Republicans or Independents.
About five weeks ago, around the 3rd week of July, regular readers may have noticed that my output both here as well as on Twitter dropped off considerably for a week or so (much to the relief of some, I'm sure).
I made a vague reference or two to "dealing with a personal crisis" while also reassuring folks that it wasn't anything tragic (no one died, got terribly sick, divorced, etc), but didn't get into any details.
For reasons which will soon become clear, my wife was not thrilled about the idea of my sharing our little saga with the world...at least not until we were 100% certain it had been resolved.
More specifically, while she agreed that there was a legitimate healthcare angle to justify posting something about it on my site, she wanted me to wait at least five weeks before going public...namely, yesterday.
As it happens, yesterday also just happened to be the exact date that the Twitterverse exploded with two major stories related to...bed bugs.
Since then, the Ohio Dept. of Insurance has reviewed and approved the rates for 2020, and while they don't provide much detail on individual carriers, overall it looks like they reduced rates slightly more (average reduction of 7.7%). The wording below is almost identical to what it was last month, except for the highlighted text:
TDCI Approves Carriers’ 2020 Rates on the Federally Facilitated Marketplace
More Choices, Rate Decrease Highlight Rating Filing Season
The Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance (TDCI) announces the approval of insurance rates requested by the five carriers offering coverage on the Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) in 2020.
Last week, a blog post over at the Georgetown Center on Health Insurance Reforms called my attention to a seemingly bizarre change of stance by the Trump Justice Department as to what the final ruling should be in the idiotic #TexasFoldEm anti-ACA lawsuit being brought by 20 (now 18) Republican state attorneys general:
Now, DOJ is changing its position again. In supplemental briefings to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, DOJ states that any invalidation of the ACA should “not extend beyond the plaintiff states….” As a remedy, DOJ argues that the court should invalidate the ACA only in the states that brought suit. In effect, if the court were to follow DOJ’s scheme it would mean striking down the ACA in the eighteen plaintiff states, but allowing it to remain intact in the thirty-two other states.
Overall individual rates increased an average of 9.0 percent and small group rates increased an average of 10.5 percent. In the individual market, CareFirst proposed an average increase of 7.7 percent for HMO plans, and 15.6 percent for PPO plans. Kaiser proposed an average increase of 5.0 percent. For small group plans, CareFirst filed average rate increases of 13.5 percent for HMO plans and 18.5 percent for the PPO plans. Kaiser small group rates proposed an average increase of 3.0 percent. Aetna filed for an average increase of 16.1 percent for HMO plans and 5.0 percent for PPO plans. Finally, United proposed an average increase of 13.0 percent and 7.4 percent for its two HMOs and 11.2 percent for its PPO plans.
REINSURANCE LOWERS HEALTH INSURANCE RATES FOR 2020
New Program Championed by Rosendale Leads to Double-Digit Rate Decreases in the Individual Market
HELENA, Mont. – State Auditor Matt Rosendale announced today that every health insurance plan sold on the individual market in Montana will have lower rates next year, largely due a new program that he’s championed for the past two years.
A few weeks ago I posted the preliminary 2020 ACA-compliant premium changes for Florida's Individual and Small Group markets. At the time, the requested rate hikes were only available for about 4 of the 10 carriers participating in the Individual Market, and just 10 of the 14 carriers on FL's Small Group market. However, the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation did provide the weighted average request: A 1.2% increase for the Indy Market and 6.4% for Small Group plans.
Today, FLOIR has released the approved rates for each, including the actual average changes for each carrier...and once again, they've whittled the rate changes down further yet on Indy plans (although they actually bumped them up a point on the Small Group market). From the press release:
OIR Announces 2020 PPACA Individual Market Health Insurance Plan Rates
Last summer, there was a hell of a bombshell dropped on the judicial system when the U.S. Dept. of Justice, under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, announced that instead of defending the Affordable Care Act against the Texas vs. U.S. lawsuit (which is their job, after all), they were effectively throwing the case by not only refusing to defend the law in court, but actively agreeing with the plaintiffs that the absurd premise of their lawsuit was correct:
Sen. Bernie Sanders changes how Medicare-for-all plan treats union contracts in face of opposition by organized labor
Sen. Bernie Sanders announced a key change to his Medicare-for-all insurance plan Wednesday, a move meant to assuage fears on the part of organized labor, whose support is being heatedly sought by all of the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Back in June, the New Mexico Insurance Dept. posted the preliminary 2020 rate change filings for the ACA individual and small group markets. At the time, the vcarriers were requesting the highest average premium increase in the country for next year: An increase of 13.0%.
The main source of this double-digit hike was New Mexico Health Connections, one of just a handful of original ACA Co-Op carriers to survive. They were requesting a whopping 30% average rate hike for 2020, and with over 1/3 of the market share, this was more than enough to drag the statewide average up. A second carrier, Presbyterian, only sells off-exchange but was requesting a 16.3% increase which also pushed the average up.
Well, today the approved rate filings have been released, and there's several eyebrow-raising developments.
If you've been following me on Twitter lately, you know that I've grown increasingly frustrated with two aspects of the Democratic Presidential primary process in recent months:
First, Sen. Elizabeth Warren's seeming 180-degree turnaround from her March stance on achieving universal healthcare coverage ("a lot of different pathways") to her more recent rhetoric (a simple, point-blank "I'm with Bernie on Medicare for All.") at the first debate in late June. At the time, I assumed this was simply due to the absurdly short time constraints and the terrible framing of the question by the moderators, but it's mid-August now and so far she seems to be sticking to her guns re. being 100% onboard with BernieCare.
Second, the almost complete ghosting of the dangers to and fixes needed for the the ACA itself regardless of what the Next Big Thing ends up being (whether Medicare for All, Medicare for America, Choose Medicare, Medicare X, etc).
I wrote last month that Highmark BCBS, the sole individual market carrier operating in Delaware, has requested a 5.8% average premium reduction for 2020. In the press release from the state insurance department they noted:
It is important to note, that the proposed rate decrease is unrelated to Delaware’s intended submission of a 1332 Waiver to establish a reinsurance program. If the application process is successful, the actuarial consultant’s projections are correct, and the State of Delaware secures adequate funding, the waiver program may decrease rates by an additional 20%.
(OK, no, this does not appear to be a "Yelp!"-like system where enrollees can directly influence the star ratings...I just posted the logo for the hell of it)
CMS is Bringing Health Plan Quality Ratings to All Exchanges for the First Time Consumers will have improved access to health plan quality information for the 2020 Open Enrollment Period
Context: Political partisanship can influence whether individuals enroll in government programs. In particular, Republicans, ceteris paribus, are less likely to enroll in Affordable Care Act (ACA) individual marketplace insurance than Democrats. The logic of adverse selection suggests low uptake among Republicans would generally put upward pressure on marketplace premiums, especially in geographic areas with more Republican partisans.
Long-time readers may recall that back during the first insane Open Enrollment Period in early 2014, I was constantly screamed at by Republicans demanding to know "BUT HOW MANY HAVE PAID???"
Ffor several months, conspiracy theories abounded about how many of those who selected Qualified Health Plans (QHPs) from the ACA exchanges actually followed through and paid their first monthly premium, thus actually being enrolled in effectuated policies.
The Trends in Subsidized and Unsubsidized Enrollment Report
The report shows that people who do not qualify for APTC continue to be priced out of the market. Following a decline of 1.3 million unsubsidized people in 2017, another 1.2 million unsubsidized people left the market in 2018. These enrollment declines among unsubsidized enrollees coincided with increases in average monthly premiums of 21 percent in 2017 and 26 percent in 2018.
DFS ANNOUNCES 2020 PREMIUM RATES: LOWERS OVERALL REQUESTED RATES FOR INDIVIDUALS AND SMALL BUSINESSES TO PROTECT CONSUMERS AND FUEL A COMPETITIVE HEALTH INSURANCE MARKETPLACE
Long-time readers know that I've repeatedly complained about how confusing and difficult it is to try and keep track of all the different divisions, branches, subsidiaries and rebrandings of various health insurance carriers. For instance, the Kansas small group market featurs "Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City" and "Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, Inc.", and in past years I'm pretty sure there was a third "Blue Cross Blue Shield".
In some cases there are multiple names for the same parent company. Here in Michigan, we have "Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan", which covers PPOs, and "Blue Care Network", which covers HMOs...but which is simply a division of BCBSM. You get the idea. Keeping track off all this can make my annual premium rate filing project (which I just wrapped up the first phase of) extremely difficult.
Yesterday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid released several important data-heavy reports, featuring a lot of month-by-month, state-by-state and year-by-year ACA enrollment data. There's a lot of data to dig into, so I'm breaking this into several posts.
First up: Average monthly effectuated enrollments. It's important to understand the difference between someone selecting a Qualified Health Plan (QHP) from one of the ACA exchanges during the Open Enrollment Period and someone actually being enrolled in an effectuated policy...that is, just because you sign your family up for a policy on HealthCare.Gov (or a state-based exchange), you aren't considered effectuated until you actually pay for the policy.
I've finally analyzed and posted my 2020 premium rate filing analyses for all 50 states (+DC), so this seems like a good time to take a look at the big picture. The table below summarizes the preliminary filings for every state, with four exceptions where the approved (or at least mostly-approved, in the case of Oregon) average rate changes are listed. Nationally, it looks like insurance carriers are only requesting an average premium increase of about 0.6% for the ACA-compliant individual market in 2020. A few caveats:
Vermont is the fourth state to announce their approved 2020 ACA individual/small group market premium rate changes. VT (along with Massachusetts and DC) has (wisely, in my opinion) merged the risk pools for the two markets into one, meaning I have to plug the numbers in differently on my spreadsheet.
Back in mid-May, my initial analysis of the two carriers participating in both Vermont markets put the weighted average rate increase being requested at an even 13.0% statewide: Blue Cross Blue Shield of VT was requesting a 15.6% increase, while MVP Health Care asked for a 9.4% bump.
Back on May 31st, I reported that New York's Dept. of Financial Services had released the preliminary, requested premium rate hikes for the 2020 ACA individual and small group markets. At the time, the weighted average increase requested state-wide was around 8.4% (although I got 8.3% when I plugged the hard enrollment numbers into a spreadsheet).
For the small grouip market, NY DFS reported an average requested increase of 12.0%, although again, I only got 11.3% when I plugged in the numbers.
Yesterday, however, NY DFS became the third state (after Oregon and Virginia) to publicly release their approved 2020 premium changes...and like OR & VA, they've shaved a few points off the average rates:
DFS ANNOUNCES 2020 PREMIUM RATES: LOWERS OVERALL REQUESTED RATES FOR INDIVIDUALS AND SMALL BUSINESSES TO PROTECT CONSUMERS AND FUEL A COMPETITIVE HEALTH INSURANCE MARKETPLACE
At long last, I've completed my analysis of the preliminary 2020 rate filings for ACA-compliant individual market policies across all 50 states (+DC)! in most cases I've also included the small group market, although with far less documentation for those.
Texas, understandably enough, has the third largest individual market in the country after California and Florida, at somewhere around 1.27 million enrollees (they had around 990,000 on-exchange enrollees; I'm pretty sure around 75% of the market is on-exchange these days).
There's ten carriers offering ACA policies on the individual market in Texas, and fifteen participating in the small group market. Unfortunately, most of the rate filings are redacted or missing data altogether (again), so I was only able to cobble together hard enrollment data for half the Indy market carriers, comprising just 15% of the statewide market. I've run an unweighted average for the other five carriers, and blended that with the first five for a semi-weighted average rate hike of just 0.8% overall.
I know this is an imperfect way of doing it, but it's the best I can do at the moment. I hope to have more complete data once the approved filings are made available.
New Jersey is an important state to watch, as they (along with DC) are the first state to specifically reinstate the ACA individual mandate penalty at the exact same levels as the just-zeroed out federal version. Massachusetts has a mandate penalty in place this year as well, but a) theirs pre-dated the ACA and was simply dusted off again and b) theirs uses a different formula anyway.
Last year, Individual Market insurance carriers in New Jersey announced that average unsubsidized 2019 premiums would be reduced by an average of 9.3% statewide due to two laws put into place by the state legislature and Governor Murphy: Reinstatement of the mandate penalty at federal levels (which lowered rates by 6.8 percentage points from +12.6% to just +5.8%) and the initiation of a solid reinsurance waiver program (which reduced rates by a further 15.1 points, for a final average change of -9.3%).
Unfortunately, North Dakota is another state where the carriers have redacted their rate filings. I was able to garner some info about one of the three carriers participating in the Individual Market next year: Medica's filing redaction wasn't done properly, so I was able to extract that they're looking at medical trend of 7.7%, a morbidity reduction of 1.5%, a 2.3% increase due to the reinstatement of the ACA's insurer fee...and a 20% reduction due to the implementation of the state's reinsurance program, which I first reported on last fall and followed up with this spring.
(sigh) I'm into the home stretch with only a handful of states left to go. Unfortunately, South Carolina is yet another state where the actual enrollment numbers are either missing or redacted, making it impossible to run a properly weighted average...but again, the range between the three carriers offering individual market policies is so narrow that it doesn't make much difference anyway (between -3.72% and +0.17%).
The unweighted average is a 1.9% reduction in unsubsidized premiums statewide.
On the small group market, however, average 2020 premiums are jumping by double digits: 11.1%.
David Balat is the director of the Right on Healthcare initiative at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank which pushes school vouchers and which attempts--against all sanity--to claim there's a moral case in favor of fossil fuels, which I guess should be described as "natural gaslighting."
Anyway, the other day, Mr. Balat posted an op-ed at The Hill in which he tries to gaslight America regarding the lengthy list of ACA sabotage efforts which have been (and which continue to be) pushed by the Trump Administration, some more successfully than others.
Repeated claims of sabotage of the ACA by the Trump Administration fall flat because of these important initiatives put in place by the president. Although the president has chosen to not defend the ACA in the Texas v. Azar case, he has made numerous strides to make available options to help Americans who require coverage suited to their needs, as well as help for those with chronic conditions.
Oklahoma has three carriers on the Individual Market these days. Once again, all three rate filing memos are redacted, but I was able to dig up the number of current policy holders for one of them (CommunityCare HMO).
I've bumped that number up a bit to account for the total number of covered lives to an even 2,000. For the other two carriers, I'm assuming Blue Cross Blue Shield still holds the lion's share of enrollees and that the total on+off-exchange market is around 187,000 people.
If this is all correct, the weighted average rate increase for unsubsidized enrollees is around 1.4% statewide.
Meanwhile, the unweighted average rate hike for the small group market is 6.5%.
As a result, I have no idea what the relative market share is between the two and am assuming they're roughly even. Even if they aren't, the requested rate changes are so close it doesn't make much difference anyway (2.3% and 3.0%). If approved as is, unsubsidized Mississippians can expect to pay about $200 more total next year.
On the small group market, there's five carriers; again, I don't know the market share of any of them, so the unweighted average increase is 6.2% statewide.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said this week that Republicans would push to repeal ObamaCare if they win back the House and President Trump is reelected in 2020.
"If we can get the House back and keep our majority in the Senate, and President Trump wins reelection, I can promise you not only are we going to repeal ObamaCare, we're going to do it in a smart way where South Carolina will be the biggest winner," Graham said in an interview with a South Carolina radio station.
"We've got to remind people that we're not for ObamaCare."
As for "South Carolina will be the biggest winner", he's referring to this, his own "Graham-Cassidy" ACA replacement scheme:
Massachusetts, which is arguably the original birthplace of the ACA depending on your point of view (the general "3-legged stool" structure originated here, but the ACA itself also has a lot of other provisions which are quite different), has ten different carriers participating in the individual market. MA (along with Vermont and the District of Columbia) has merged their Individual and Small Group risk pools for premium setting purposes, so I'm not bothering breaking out the small group market in this case.
Getting a weighted average was a bit tricky. On the one hand, only one or two of the rate filings included actual enrollment data. On the other hand, the Massachusetts Health Connector puts out monthly enrollment reports which do break out the on-exchange numbers by carrier. This allowed me to run a rough breakout of on-exchange MA enrollment. I don't know whether the off-exchange portion has a similar ratio, but I have to assume it does for the moment.
Huh. This is interesting...after a couple dozen states with near-flat or even reduced 2020 premiums, Louisiana is just the third state I've come across where the carriers are seeking double-digit rate increases for next year.
There's actually only 3 carriers offering individual market plans in Louisiana, but there's seven listings because two of the carriers have broken out their submissions into several different product lines. Overall, HMO LA, LA Health Service & Indemnity (Blue Cross Blue Shield of LA) and Vantage Health Plan are requesting average premium increases of 11.7% statewide.
I should note that there's also one odd listing (see second screenshot below), from UnitedHealthcare. It claims to be for off-exchange ACA-compliant individual market plans, but two things about it make no sense:
After several years with four carriers participating in their ACA individual market, the Peach State is gaining not one but two additional carriers this year: CareSource and Oscar are joining Alliant, Ambetter/Centene, Blue Cross Blue Shield and Kaiser. Unlike a lot of the states I've crunched numbers for recently, I was able to acquire hard enrollment numbers for every single Georgia carrier...including both the Individual and Small Group markets, which is a rarity this year!
Statewide, GA's individual market carriers are requesting average unsubsidized 2020 rate hikes of just 2.4%, while the small group carriers are looking for a 12.8% average increase:
(sigh) The good news is that none of the five carrier rate filings for Utah's individual market have been redacted. Hooray! The bad news is taht only one of the five (Molina) included their current enrollment total on the filing at all. Boo!
As a result, I'm only able to run a "mostly" unweighted average...that is, it's an unweighted average of the other four carriers, plus a slight additional tweak based on the tiny number (448 people) enrolled in Molina policies. Utah's total individual market should be around 240,000 people, so that's barely a rounding error. My best guess is that unsubsidized enrollees are looking at roughly a 5.9% average premium drop next year.
For the state's small group market, the unweighted average increase is 2.7%.
West Virginia has three carriers offering policies on the Individual Market: CareSource, Highmark and The Health Plan of WV (aka Optum). I was ble to find the hard enrollment number for CareSource, while both HighMark and Optum are redacted, so I based my enrollment estimates on 83% of last year's (WV's total ACA exchange enrollment dropped 17% this year). Even if that ratio is off, it won't make that much of a difference since the two are pretty close anyway (+5.9% and +6.5% respectively).
Statewide, unsubsidized West Virginians will be seeing roughly a 6.7% average increase...to a whopping $1,000/month on average, one of the highest rates in the country. Of course, WV is also one of the few states which, to my knowledge, is still refusing to Silver Load or Silver Switch their premium increases, which makes it even worse for the few unsubsidized enrollees they have.
Meanwhile, the unweighted average increase on the WV small group market is +11.2%.
Just hours after explaining what a dramatic impact the nearly-flat average 2020 premium changes are going to have on this year's (and next year's) Medical Loss Ratio rebate payments, I've discovered that rates are going to be increasing even less than I thought nationally.
Back in late May, Virginia was one of the first states to post their preliminary 2020 premium rate filings. At the time, the 10 carriers participating in VA's individual market (one of which is new for 2020) were asking for average increases of 2.9% statewide:
For weeks now, my blog posts have been overwhelmed by my state-by-state analysis of the preliminary 2020 ACA individual market rate filings. With the addition yesterday of Illinois, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas and especially Florida, I've now accounted for over 75% of the total ACA Individual Market nationally.
I still have a dozen states to go, including large ones like Texas and Georgia, but barring some devastatingly huge rate hikes, the picture is clear: Average unsubsidized 2020 ACA individual market premiums will only be going up an average of less than 1% nationally.
I've now analyzed the preliminary average (weighted or, in a few unfortunate cases, unweighted) premium change requests for over 3 dozen states. Of the dozen or so left, the largest states unanalyzed are Georgia, Texas...and Florida.
(sigh) Kansas is yet another state where the enrollment data for each of the carriers is redacted on the filing forms this year. To run the weighted average, I'm using last year's estimated enrollment numbers for each, which may have shifted around this year.
Assuming things haven't shfited around too much, unsubsidized Kansans will likely be looking at roughly a 3.1% average premium reduction in 2020...which also happens to be the same as the unweighted average change.
Meanwhile, the small group market is looking at an unweighted average increase of 9.7% statewide.
(sigh) As is common this year, the rate filings for Iowa's Individual and Small Group market are heavily redacted, making it impossible to calculate a weighted average premium rate change. On the Indy market, Medica is reducing their unsubsidized 2020 premiums by 11.3%, while Wellmark is raising theirs by around 4.8%.
Seeing how Wellmark only re-entered the ACA-compliant individual market this year, I'm assuming Medica has the lion's share of enrollees...but who knows? Also, Wellmark is offering two different types of policies; I'm assuming that at most the two combine to be similar to Medica's total. If so, that should mean an average premium reduction of around 3.3%.
For the small group market, I just ran an unweighted average of the 12 different companies offering policies, coming up woth an average 5.4% increase.
There is one interesting tidbit in the Wellmark filing, however: They expect 100% of their 2020 enrollees to do so on-exchange, which basically means that their unsubsidized premiums have gone up so much that they don't expect anyone to be willing to pay full price (off-exchange) for them.
Hawaii only has two carriers participating in the Individual health insurance market. For 2020, they're reducing unsubsidized premiums slightly.
The state's small group market has four carriers; unfortunately, only one of the four (Kaiser Foundation Health Plan) has posted their enrollment data; the other three are redacted. The unweighted average increase on the small group market is a mere 0.8%, however.
The good news is that as of August 2nd, the preliminary 2020 ACA premium rate changes are now available for every state at the RateReview.HealthCare.Gov website.
The bad news is that more carriers appear to be redacting their filings, making it more difficult to run weighted averages based on relative market share. In the case of Illinois, all five carriers on the individual market either redacted or not listed in the summary memos at all.
As a result, all I can do is run an unweighted average, which comes to a 1.4% premium increase statewide. My guess is that Blue Cross Blue Shield likely has the bulk of the market, which means the weighted average is likely just about flat.
For the small group market I didn't even bother trying to get the enrollment data; the unweighted average there is a 4.7% increase.
The good news is that as of August 2nd, the preliminary 2020 ACA premium rate changes are now available for every state at the RateReview.HealthCare.Gov website.
The bad news is that while it does make it extremely easy to look up the average rate changes being requested for every carrier on the Individual and Small Group markets, they appear to have made it somewhat harder to dig up the other key data I need to run weighted averages...namely, the actual enrollment numbers for each, along with other noteworthy items like special circumstances, breakouts of the reasons for the rate changes and so on.
Every year some rate filing forms are redacted, but it seems to be more prevalent for 2020. I don't know if that's something being done by the carriers or at HC.gov's end, but for whatever reason, it's more difficult for me to run weighted averages this year.
Alabama only has two carriers offering Individual Market policies. Unfortunately, the rate filing forms are redacted in some states, so I'm having to patch together bits & pieces of data to try and estimate the weighted average rate changes. In the case of Alabama, the filing for Blue Cross Blue Shield lists 179,500 total individual market enrollees in 2018, but there's no data for 2019...while the filing for Bright Health Insurance (a relative newcomer to the market) doesn't list any enrollment data at all.
I'm assuming that BCBSAL holds a solid 90% of the market and that their total enrollment is around the same year over year. If so, that would give Bright around 20.5K enrollees and make the total Alabama Individual Market around an even 200,000 people. Again, assuming all of this is accurate, that means a weighted average increase of 3.9%, which in turn means unsubsidized enrollees are looking at average premium increases of around $26/month or $312 for the year.
NOTE: This has been corrected from an earlier version.
The floodgates are now officially open for preliminary (not final) 2020 ACA rate filings for both the Individual and Small Group markets. There are several states which only have a single insurance carrier offering policies on the Individual Market, which makes it very easy to calculate the weighted average rate changes...seeing how a single carrier holds 100% of the market.
Among these states are Alaska, Nebraska and Wyoming, where the sole Indy Market carriers are once again Premera BCBS (AK), Medica (NE) and BCBS of Wyoming. Unfortunately, the rate filing forms for all three are partly redacted, making it impossible for me to determine how many total enrollees they have, although I have a pretty good estimate of the on-exchange number as of the end of March for each.
In Alaska, Premera's 2020 rates are virtually unchanged year over year. In Nebraska, Medica expects to reduce rates an average of 5.3%. And in Wyoming, BCBS is only looking to bump up average unsubsidized premiums by 1.6%.
I feel kind of stupid posting this in the aftermath of not one, but two massacres in El Paso, TX and Dayton, OH (at least one of which was a clear case of white nationalist terrorism inspired and encouraged by Donald Trump), but I was bout 80% done with this last night and this is part of my job, so here it is.
Gov. Tony Evers today announced that 2020 rates on Wisconsin’s individual health insurance market will be 3.2 percent lower on a weighted average compared to 2019 rates. This encouraging news further demonstrates that the individual market is stabilizing and Wisconsin residents are able to access more affordable coverage options.
The rate decrease also highlights the positive impact of that the Wisconsin Healthcare Stability Plan (WIHSP), or the state’s reinsurance program, is having on the individual market. WIHSP was fully funded in the recently signed 2019-2021 state biennial budget. Without the WIHSP, rates in the individual market were expected to increase by 9 percent in 2020.
Both evenings of the Detroit Democratic Debates earlier this week started off with half-hour segments on healthcare policy. I meant to do write-ups about both of them but for one reason or another never got around to it until now. Tons of other healthcare wonks have already written their own think pieces by now, so I'm not going to go back and rehash the whole thing at this point.
HOWEVER, there's one quote which made my jaw drop, and it doesn't come from any of the Big Four (Biden, Warren, Harris or Sanders). It comes from Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard...and it didn't even come during the debate itself, but afterwards in the "Spin Room" (they actually call it that) with Anderson Cooper.
Federal Government Announces 2020 Premium Rates
Website details proposed decreases for health plans to be sold in NH
CONCORD, NH – The federal government has published information on proposed rates for New Hampshire’s health insurance exchange (HealthCare.gov) in 2020.
The New Hampshire Insurance Department looks at premiums each year from a market-wide perspective, comparing the median premium for an on-exchange silver-level plan covering a 40-year-old non-tobacco-user. For 2019, the median premium at this level was $440; the median premium at this level for 2020 would be $429, based on the carriers’ proposed rates. If these rates are ultimately approved, this would represent a 2.5% decrease between next year’s and this year’s median premium in the individual market.
Missouri has also released their preliminary 2020 Individual and Small Group market premium rate change filings. For the most part they're following the same pattern as most other states this year with modest increases or decreases and a statewide weighted average decrease of 1.8% year over year. On average, unsubsidized ACA enrollees should pay about $11/month less next year than they are today.
However, what is noteworthy is that not one, not two but three new insurance carriers are entering the MO individual market this fall, bringing the total up to seven operating statewide: Cox Health Systems, Oscar Insurance (which was cofounded by Jared Kushner's brother, FWIW) and SSM Health Insurance.
The Small Group market, meanwhile, is looking at roughly 6.9% premium increases, although this could be a bit off since I had to use the 2018 enrollment number for UnitedHealthcare, which also happens to have the largest market share of the six companies in that market:
Proposed rate change averages for health insurance are available to the public for review
Consumers who shop for health insurance in the individual market, can now view new rate information for Plan Year 2020 on the Nevada Division of Insurance website.
Based on the rate submissions the Division has received for 2020 plans, there are three insurance companies that submitted proposed rates for plans on the Silver State Health Insurance Exchange (Exchange): Health Plan of Nevada, SilverSummit, and HMO Colorado, with up to 26 individual health plans to choose from. The proposed average increase is 0.5% for those health insurance plans sold On-Exchange through Nevada Health Link.
As I've explained before, Section 1332 of the ACA itself gives individual states the right to petition to make changes in how the law works in their state. The idea is that, as President Obama noted himself, if a state can come up with ways to make the ACA provide coverage which is at least as comprehensive to at least as many people as it already does, without increasing the federal deficit, go for it.
There've been a couple dozen 1332 waivers which have made it at least partway through the development process; some failed along the way, some were completed but then rejected by CMS, and some have been approved. The most common type of approved 1332 waiver, in nearly a dozen states now, is for reinsurance, which is a wonky way of leveraging state dollars to reduce premiums for unsubsidized ACA enrollees.
If you're wondering why you've only heard about "reinsurance waivers" over the past year or two, there's two reasons.
The Department of Insurance received preliminary 2020 health plan information from insurance carriers on June 1 and began reviewing the proposed plan documents and rates for compliance with Idaho and federal regulations. The Department of Insurance does not have the authority to set or establish insurance rates, but it does have the authority to deem rate increases submitted by insurance companies as reasonable or unreasonable. After the review and negotiation process, the carriers submit their final rate 2020 increase information. The public is invited to provide comments on the rate changes. Please send any comments to Idaho Department of Insurance.
