Dive Brief:
- Studies announced Tuesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Avalere found premium increases for health plans under the ACA marketplaces to vary widely among states from 2015 to 2016 and from 2016 to 2017.
- The findings indicate there is no meaningful national average, according to RWJF.
- Avalere's study of proposed 2017 rates added that aside from the wide variation, there are overall higher rate increases than what occurred for 2016.
Dive Insight:
The reviews of 2016 premium increases and projections for 2017 agreed on high geographic variability, and suggested that averaged U.S. rate increases do little to illustrate impacts to any real consumers.
In addition to state-by-state variation, states are seeing significant variation within their borders, particularly between urban and rural areas, Avalere added.
To demonstrate the variation, RWJF reported that for 2016, 29.1% of Americans saw their average premium for the lowest-cost silver plan go down while 26.3% saw them increase more than 15%. The two extremes were Indiana on the low end, where rates went down 12.1%, and Oklahoma on the high end, where rates went up 41.8%.
Avalere, meanwhile, showed that proposed hikes for 2017, based on 9 states with complete data available, currently range from 5% in Washington to 44% in Vermont across all silver plans in states.
“As rate filings are announced, we will continue to see a lot of regional variation in proposed increases,” RWJF's Kathy Hempstead said in a prepared statement. “Despite some geographic convergence in premiums in 2016, there are some markets that are still relatively underpriced, and these are places where we may see more significant adjustments taking place.”