Texas: Preliminary avg. unsubsidized 2025 #ACA rate changes: +5.8% (semi-weighted); US Health & Life dropping out?

As always, the Texas individual and small group markets are pretty messy. For starters, they have up to 20 individual market carriers depending on the year, along with over a dozen small group market carriers some years (this year they're at 17 and 8 respectively).

On top of that, as is also the case in some other states, some of the names of the insurance carriers can be confusing as hell. There's the "Insurance company of Scott & White" which seems to have changed its name to "Baylor Scott & White Insurance Co.," which isn't to be confused with "Scott & White Health Plans" and so on.

I was only able to acquire hard enrollment data for five of the carriers on the individual market this year, and one of those doesn't really count since they're brand new and don't have any (Wellpoint Insurance Co.). For another 11 of them the rate filings include the number of policyholders but not the actual number of covered lives; for those I'm using an average 1.4x multiplier, based on the actual multiplier found in the carriers I have both numbers available for.

That leaves one carrier (Sendero) which had to make a complete guess about based on last year. Finally, there's one carrier (US Health & LIfe) which appears to be dropping out of the TX individual market.

As a result of all of this, I have a semi-weighted average which makes several assumptions, coming in at a 5.8% overall requested rate hike.

For the Texas small group market, the completely unweighted average rate hike being asked for is 5.5%.