The department of Insurance has released the proposed rates for next year for individuals and small groups. I have put them together into our easy to use spreadsheets and are looking forward to being able to quote new policies soon. There seems to be some interesting trends. Anthem has decided to decrease their rates and offer totally new products, including an actual PPO product this next year. Sierra Health is staying with their product line up with relatively low increases and they are even introducing some lower cost alternative plan options. Assurant health, who last year was a big player has decided to join Humana at higher than market rates with increases as high as 30%+. Golden Rule is also putting their hat into the ring again this next year with rates equivalent to Assurant and Humana. Aetna has decided to stop offering Coventry plans, but they have kept the same kind of rates amongst the new Aetna plans that were similar to Coventry offerings with very strong low rates in the Bronze and Silver levels. Humana has also decided to increase their product offerings to expand into Platinum and Gold, but rates are still slightly higher than the lower priced Anthem, Sierra Health, and Nevada Health Coop Products. The Nevada Health Coop has introduced a whole lot of new offerings. They have expanded their Southern Simple and neighborhood plans to include platinum coverage and are introducing a whole new set of plans. Their rates are still amongst the least expensive.
Some big news for people who shop for coverage with subsidies is Assurant is going to be offering the first true PPOs on our exchange. This is good news to people who want more freedom and more choices f doctors. We are still yet to hear what provider network these plans will be using, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was the Aetna Signature Administrators network they used mostly last year.
As we get more updates about how our new federally facilitated marketplace will work, I hope to port more about those changes and hopefully we will be seeing some fixes to some of the biggest headaches we have been dealing with.
