Vermont 2016 rate requests: 7.8% individual, 8.1% small group

The 2016 rate requests are popping up all over the place now...here's Vermont:

• Blue Cross Blue Shield of VT is requesting avg. 8.38% increase for 31,147 individual exchange enrollees and 35,903 small business (small group) enrollees.

HOWEVER, it's important to bear in mind that this average a) ranges from 4.7% to 14.3% depending on the type of policy, and they seem to have mixed both individual and small group enrollments together (first time I've seen that so far). Here's the distribution; I'm not sure I understand the 2,964-enrollee difference between the totals:

As you can see, about 1.6% of enrollees would see an increase of 5% or less, while 32% would see a 10-15% increase, with the remaining 66% between 5-10%.

• MVP Health Care is requesting an average 3.0% increase for 4,123 individual exchange enrollees and 2,296 small group enrollees.

Again, they've combined individual and small group together in a single filing (must be a Vermont thing?), and again, this ranges from a reduction of 1.8% to an increase of 27.3%. As you can see, that eyebrow-raising 27.3% figure only applies to Catastrophic policies...which only 149 people are enrolled in anyway:

Weighted between the two companies, this comes to 35,270 individual enrollees and 38,199 small group enrollees:

• BCBSVT: 8.38% x 88.31% = 0.07400378
• MVP: 3.0% x 11.69% = 0.003507
• Weighted Individual Request: 7.75%

• BCBSVT: 8.38% x 93.99% = 0.07876362
• MVP: 3.0% x 6.01% = 0.001803
• Weighted Sm. Group Request: 8.06%