Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), announced Utah’s extension of comprehensive coverage for postpartum individuals for a full 12 months through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
Utah's preliminary 2024 individual and small group market rate filings are listed below. They launched a handy new website specifically dedicated to insurance filings, which is nice to see.
Unless there's a change in the final/approved rates, unsubsidized individual market plan premiums are increasing by around 11.4% in 2023, while small group plans will go up 10.5% on average (caveat: I had to estimate the actual enrollment numbers for two of the small group carriers, so the weighted average may be slightly off). Both market hikes are significantly higher rate increases than they were last year.
I should note that both Aetna and Imperial Health appear to be newly entering the Utah individual market next year.
UPDATE 10/04/23: The Utah Insurance Dept. has published approved rates for all individual & small group market carriers with one exception (Molina is still listed as "submitted," but they only have 0.6% of the total market anyway so any dramatic change to their final rates would be a rounding error at most statewide).
Overall most of the filings were accepted as is, although a couple saw significant changes: BridgeSpan had their 6.7% increase nearly doubled to 12.1%, while Regence BCBS was shaved down slightly, from 9.2% to 8.8%.
MICHIGAN: Another One (Mostly) Bites The Dust; 12th CO-OP Drops Off Exchange, May Go Belly-Up
It appears that East Lansing-based Consumers Mutual Insurance of Michigan could wind down operations this year as it is not participating in the state health insurance exchange for 2016.
But officials of Consumers Mutual today are discussing several options that could determine its future status with the state Department of Insurance and Financial Services, said David Eich, marketing and public relations officer with Consumers Mutual.
Consumers Mutual CEO Dennis Litos said: "We are reviewing our situation (financial condition) with DIFS and should conclude on a future direction this week.”
While Eich said he could not disclose the options, he said one is “winding down” the company, which has 28,000 members, including about 6,000 on the exchange.
Utah's preliminary 2022 individual and small group market rate filings are listed below. They launched a handy new website specifically dedicated to insurance filings, which is nice to see.
Unless there's a change in the final/approved rates, unsubsidized individual market plan premiums are increasing by around 6.0% in 2023, while small group plans will go up 6.7% on average.
UPDATE 10/12/22: It looks like every preliminary rate filing was accepted by the state insurance regulators as is, on both the individual and small group market.
Utah has an elaborate, color-coded public database which lets you search for health insurance rate filings for not just the current and upcoming year, but also for years dating back nearly a decade. It can be a bit confusing (for instance, the "Latest Rate Changes" section on the main page is currently blank even though both the individual and small group plans for 2022 were all recently approved), but it's still a lot better than most states offer.
Between this database and Utah's SERFF listings, I've been able to put together the full requested and approved filings for every carrier in both markets, along with the enrollment numbers for each, allowing for weighted average increases.
Individual market enrollees are looking at roughly a 1% average unsubsidized rate increase, while small group plans are goin gup about 4.5% overall. From what I can tell, WMI Mutual is dropping off the small group market, but they don't have anyone enrolled in their policies right now anyway.
I've once again relaunched my project from last fall to track Medicaid enrollment (both standard and expansion alike) on a monthly basis for every state dating back to the ACA being signed into law.
For the various enrollment data, I'm using data from Medicaid.gov's Medicaid Enrollment Data Collected Through MBES reports. Unfortunately, they've only published enrollment data through December 2020. In most states I've been able to get more recent enrollment data from state websites and other sources. Unfortunately, Rhode Island is among the few states where I haven't been able to get ahold of post-2020 data yet, even estimates.
Now that I've developed a standardized format/layout & methodology for tracking both state- and county-level COVID vaccination levels by partisan lean (which can also be easily applied to other variables like education level, median income, population density, ethnicity, etc), I've started moving beyond my home state of Michigan.
Utah's preliminary (and possibly final?) 2021 individual and small group market rate filings are listed below. Unless there's a change in the final/approved rates, individual marekt plan premiums will drop slightly by around 1.2% on average next year, while small group plans will increase by around 4.3%.
