IMPORTANT: Some of the weighted averages listed below are "hard" averages, while others are a bit fuzzy. Some are based on partly-weighted averages, with estimates for the rest; others are pretty solid if the enrollment/market share numbers they're based on are accurate (which may not always be the case).
Finally, in all of the states listed to date except for New York and Oregon, the "weighted average" given is still based on requested increases, not approved increases. The importance of this can't be overstated; for example, in New York, the weighted average request was for increases of 10.4%, but just hours ago the NY regulators announced that they've lopped them down to 7.1%.
In short, caveats, disclaimers and so forth abound.
Also note that there's 3 states marked in yellow (Florida, Texas and Missouri) where the "weighted average increase" is actually the maximum possible statewide average; the actual statewide average might be somewhat lower. See my Missouri entry for an explanation of how I came up with these estimates.
Finally, everything here is for the individual market only; this doesn't include small or large group policies, Medicaid, Medicare, the VA or anything else. It also doesn't include the couple of million "grandfathered" or "transitional" individual policies which some people are still enrolled in for the moment.
OK, with all of that out of the way, here's what things look like at the moment:
Recently, Richard Simpkins (aka icowrich) took my latest state roundup of the known state-wide 2016 rate increase requests (updated with 16 states +DC) and took it one step further. He plugged the weighted average rate increases for each state into a spreadsheet and then ran a "weighted" average based on each state's proportion of the total U.S. population, like so:
...giving an overall rate increase of about 11.3%, which isn't fantastic but is right in line with the 10-12% which was typical nationally prior to the ACA.
Obviously this is a very partial picture, for several important reasons:
—First, he had to leave out Kentucky and Pennsylvania since I haven't been able to run any sort of weighted average for those states.
—Second, this leaves just 16 states plus DC, which make up about 155 million people...or just under half of the total U.S. population. Obviously the other 34 states could easily have dramatically higher (or lower, in some cases) average rate hikes.
—Third, even within these 17 entries, some of them are only partly weighted, especially Colorado and Maryland.
—Fourth, in every state listed except for Oregon and New York, these are still requested hikes only, not approved (although California in particular is highly unlikely to end up being much different after being reviewed)
—FLORIDA, which I added on Thursday, July 30th, could actually be a couple percentage points higher or lower; as far as I can tell, it could be as low as 12.4% or as high as 16.8%.
—Note that Missouri & Texas are also very rough estimates...although if anything, I suspect the actual weighted average is slightly lower for each of these states.
Still, with all those caveats taken into account, this gives a rough idea of what things look like for half the country.
The only other issue I had with running the weighting this way is that the total population of each state probably isn't the best benchmark to use, since these rate hikes are only relevant to the individual market within each state, which can vary widely depending on the local economy, demographics and so on. The ideal number to use would be the total individual markets in each state (both on- and off-exchange), minus any grandfathered/transitional enrollees in each one.
Unfortunately, I don't have that data for 2015. The closest to this that I have at the moment are a) currently effectuated exchange-based enrollment as of 3/31/15 and b) the total 2014 individual market size for each state. Neither of these is ideal: The former doesn't include off-exchange ACA-compliant enrollees and is 3 months out of date, while the latter includes grandfathered/transitional enrollees and is 6 months out of date. They'll have to do for now, however.
When I plug in the March 31, 2015 ACA Exchange Only numbers, it's slightly higher (around 11.4% overall):
When I base things on the 2014 total individual market size, however (again, this includes grandfathered/transitional enrollees who are not part of the same risk pool), it's a bit higher yet, at around 12.0% even:
Again, massive caveats surround all 3 of these tables; if a large state not shown like Illinois or Pennsylvania ends up with a 30% overall hike, that would obviously skew the national average up dramatically. For these 16 states (+DC), however, running the numbers all three ways seems to stay roughly within the same range: Somewhere between 11-12%.