ObamaMESS: GET READY .. Large Health Plans set to Raise Rates

Hundreds of thousands of consumers nationwide who bought insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act will face a choice this fall: swallow higher premiums to stay in their plan, or save money by switching. 

That is the picture emerging from proposed 2015 insurance rates in the 10 states that have completed their filings, which stretch from Rhode Island to Washington state. In all but one of them, the largest health insurer in the state is proposing to increase premiums between 8.5% and 22.8% for next year, according to a Wall Street Journal review of the filings. That percentage represents the average rate increases for all individual health plans offered by that carrier.

At the same time, insurers with the smallest enrollments are proposing to cut rates so they can lure customers as the cheapest plans in their markets. 

The rate proposals reflect a combination of big carriers stepping back from initial aggressive pricing, rising medical costs and increased competition during the second year of President Barack Obama's health law. Indeed, several insurers plan to enter new states next year after sitting out some markets in the law's first year. United HealthCare, for example, is going into Connecticut, Michigan, Rhode Island and Washington for 2015. 

Complicating next year's pricing is the fact that insurers have scant data on their enrollees' use of health services, because many consumers waited until the March deadline to buy plans.

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"Carriers are as much in the dark as they were last year, but what they do know is where the rest of the market is," said Robert Laszewski, president of Health Policy & Strategy Associates LLC, a health-insurance consultant in Alexandria, Va. 

In all 10 states with complete public rate filings, the insurers with the largest enrollment in 2014 also offered the lowest or second-lowest prices for coverage in the first year of the law's new online insurance exchanges. 

With dominant market share now, analysts say, carriers feel they have room to raise rates. Nine of the carriers are proposing average increases for 2015 that range from 8.5% by Anthem Inc. in Virginia to 22.8% from CareFirst for its BlueChoice plans in Maryland. Most of these large carriers' proposed rate increases hover around 10%. Maine's carrier is keeping rates flat.

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