Covered California premiums will rise an average of 9%. See the increase in your area

July 19--Covered California said it expects to increase its health insurance premiums by an average of 8.7 percent in 2019, double what it would have been if Congress had not dropped the Affordable Care Act individual mandate, officials said Thursday.

"Covered California continues to benefit millions of people in our state by giving them access to high-quality, affordable health coverage," said Peter Lee, the agency's executive director. "It is unfortunate when a rate change of nearly 9 percent is generally viewed as good news, when the rate change could -- and should -- have been much lower."

Lee said all 11 insurance carriers currently with Covered California will continue to offer plans through Covered California. The healthy mix of consumers in the Covered California pool has helped to keep rates lower than the nation as a whole.

Pricewaterhouse Coopers has said that health insurance rates in the employer marketplace will increase by 2 to 4 percent on average for U.S. workers, Lee said, because of the overall decline in enrollment through the health plans offered on state and federal marketplaces.

Covered California is the Golden State's health insurance exchange that works to offer affordable, high-quality insurance plans from the same companies offering coverage through employers. The Covered California rate increase proposal must go to state regulators for approval.

The exchange offered a table Thursday of how the increases break down by region:

Pricing Region

Total enrollment*

Avg. rate change

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Region 1

Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Del Norte, Glenn, Humboldt, Lake, Lassen, Mendocino, Modoc, Nevada, Plumas, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Trinity, Tuolumne and Yuba counties

53,772

9.0%

5.3%

Region 2

Marin, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties

51,193

9.1%

3.1%

Region 3

Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado and Yolo counties

79,158

8.8%

3.5%

Region 4

San Francisco County

36,099

9.4%

1.5%

Region 5

Contra Costa County

44,114

8.4%

1.7%

Region 6

Alameda County

63,554

9.4%

4.4%

Region 7

Santa Clara County

58,435

6.3%

-12.2%

Region 8

San Mateo County

24,283

9.3%

2.7%

Region 9

Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz counties

27,283

16.0%

11.4%

Region 10

San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Merced, Mariposa and Tulare counties

68,817

6.8%

0.5%

Region 11

Fresno, Kings and Madera counties

32,674

3.2%

0.4%

Region 12

San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara and Ventura counties

65,829

8.7%

1.4%

Region 13

Mono, Inyo and Imperial counties

13,329

-0.5%

-3.5%

Region 14

Kern County

17,715

8.3%

6.9%

Region 15

Los Angeles County (northeast)

173,381

10.0%

-1.1%

Region 16

Los Angeles County (southwest)

213,126

8.6%

-5.2%

Region 17

San Bernardino and Riverside counties

123,025

9.0%

0.7%

Region 18

Orange County

133,166

9.0%

-2.2%

Region 19

San Diego County

116,149

9.0%

-3.8%

TOTAL

1,395,102

8.7%

-0.7%

* Effectuated enrollment for April 2018

Source: Covered California

In late 2017 under a tax bill, President Donald Trump, backed by Republicans in Washington, formally ended the individual mandate under Obamacare that requires citizens to have health coverage or pay a federal tax penalty. That requirement expires in 2019.

As a result, health insurers and policy experts are concerned that healthy, young people will drop their health insurance, destabilizing markets and making coverage even more expensive.

That mandate, Lee and others have said, was critical to ensuring that consumers who paid no subsidies could count on a broad pool of people buying insurance along with them. The broader the pool, the more likely it would supply a healthy mix that would keep insurance rates low.

This story is developing, check with sacbee.com for updates.

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