South Dakota: Requested 2016 weighted avg. rate hike: 27.4%

This is a perfect follow-up to my last story about the new Agile Insurance report.

According to their report, "100%" of South Dakota's individual insurance market products have requested double-digit rate hikes next year, which sounds bad.

However, also according to their report, "0%" of those products are seeking hikes higher than 20%.

According to Agile Health Insurance, in other words, every single South Dakota insurance plan sold on Healthcare.Gov is seeking somewhere between 10-20% hikes, right?

OK...but look what happens when you include the off-exchange "products" as well:

How the hell did that happen?

Simple: Of the 7 entries above, only 3 of them (the 13.7% Avera filing, the 13.2% Sanford filing and the 18% SD State Medical filing...aka DAKOTACARE) are actually being sold on Healthcare.Gov.

The others, including some nominally enrolled plans as well as Wellmark of South Dakota's 15,200 enrollees, are only sold off-exchange...and given that Wellmark is requesting a whopping 42.9% hike, that seriously jacks up the state-wide average:

Not a pretty picture, but still important to keep in mind.