2020 Rate Changes

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

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.

First of all, there's this (first noted by Sabrina Corlette):

CHRISTUS HEALTH PLAN LOSES QUALIFIED HEALTH PLAN STATUS

Over the weekend, the New York Department of Financial Services issued a press release announcing approved 2020 ACA-compliant Individual and Small Group premium rate changes:

DFS ANNOUNCES 2020 PREMIUM RATES: LOWERS OVERALL REQUESTED RATES FOR INDIVIDUALS AND SMALL BUSINESSES TO PROTECT CONSUMERS AND FUEL A COMPETITIVE HEALTH INSURANCE MARKETPLACE

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.

From the Green Mountain Care Board a few days ago:

GREEN MOUNTAIN CARE BOARD MODIFIES AND APPROVES RATE REQUESTS FOR 2020 VHC PLANS

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.

Sure enough, a week or so ago it was made official:

(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%.