Tennessee health insurers request rates hikes of 21 to 42 percent for 2018
BlueCross said Friday it is making money this year from its individual plans offered on the Obamacare health exchanges for the first time in four years after increasing premiums by 62 percent in 2017 and 36 percent in 2016.
BlueCross spokeswoman
"Our 2017 rates are allowing us to earn a margin for the first time in four years and would have enabled us to propose only a nominal increase for 2018 to cover expected changes in medical and operating costs," Danielson said. "However, we have to factor two significant uncertainties into our proposed rates for 2018 -- whether the federal government will fund cost-sharing reductions and how the risk pool will change if the coverage mandate is not enforced."
Cigna spokesman
"Our 2018 rate filings are based on our customers' historical claims experience, expected medical costs trends, product changes, overall market performance, along with the evolving rules, regulations and design of the marketplace," Mundy said.
"While the
Cigna's pricing for 2018 assumes that the cost-sharing reductions are not funded, a factor that added an average 14.1 percent increase to its request.
Humana,
The
The state regulates insurance rates for individuals. Most Tennesseans are covered by employer-sponsored plans, whose rates are not directly set by the state, and the increases in premiums for group plans generally have not been as great in recent years as the rise in individual rates.
Among more than 2.6 million Tennesseans insured by BlueCross, for instance, only about 78,000 now are insured with individual plans through the health exchanges.
"Unfortunately, they didn't -- and the medical services required by our new members were more expensive than we'd anticipated," she said. "The risk pool didn't get better. In fact, we lost
If fewer people sign up for coverage, insurers complain that they usually are left insuring those who are sickest or need the most health care services and are therefore most likely to seek insurance.
In response to its early losses under Obamacare, BlueCross withdrew its individual coverage under the health care exchange market in 2017 in
BlueCross plans to resume selling individual insurance plans under the exchange market in the 16-county
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