How Much Will My Health Insurance Cost In 2016?
It’s that time of year again. Open enrollment is upon us in a few months, and people are wondering how much their health insurance will cost when it comes around. People feel powerless because prices haven’t been released yet…
Or have they, and you just aren’t aware of it?
While we primarily focus on Renters Insurance, renters need health insurance, too and we’re here to help renters get the insurance coverage they need. Part of that involves unraveling the mystery of health insurance pricing for renters. Everyone wants to know how much health insurance will cost in 2016. Read on for the secret way you can get prices for next year’s plans today!
How Much Will My Health Insurance Cost In 2016?
If you call your health insurance company, they’ll tell you that they won’t know until open enrollment. The customer service people might not know, but you can find out through the miracle of preliminary rate filings. The process will vary from state to state, so here are a couple of examples of how to find the data. Whether you need to know your health insurance renewal price or you need to know the price of new health insurance next year, you’ve got options!
2016 Indiana Health Insurance Rates
The first example is Indiana, simply because the process is pretty easy. You’re going to start off by going to http://www.in.gov/idoi/ratewatch/ – that’s where the preliminary filings are to be found. Select “health” as the insurance category. In the “Insurance Company” box, you need to put in the writing company. This may not be the same as the name of the insurance company you’re familiar with, but it will be on your insurance card.
An Indiana United Healthcare card, for instance, will say “underwritten by All Savers Insurance Company” on it. In that example, All Savers would be what you put in the Insurance Company field. Now delete dates from both “Date Range” boxes so they’re blank, and click “2016 Marketplace Filings” (it’s the second button, not the first!)
This page will offer you “Filings submitted to Indiana for the 2016 Federal Marketplace”. Find the company you want 2016 health insurance rates for. Copy the “SERFF Tracking Number” and ignore all of the other columns. Now open a new tab and go to https://filingaccess.serff.com/sfa/home/IN (For whatever reason, the state chose not to directly link the two).
Click “Begin Search”, accept the terms, and enter the number you just copied into the “SERFF Tracking Number” field. Hit “Search.” You should have one row of data in the resulting table. Click that row, and you’ll get a Filing Information page. Scroll down, and you’re looking for the Rate/Rule section of the table. Click the link for the “2016 IEX Rate Manual” It will open a PDF. Now comes the fun part… You’ll need a little math, but not much.
Note on page two the formula to calculate 2016 health insurance premium rates, in this example, is rounded to two decimal places and is reached by multiplying:
Monthly Base Rate x Plan Factor x Age Factor x Tobacco Factor (if applicable) x Area Factor
It’s really not that bad, we promise!
Monthly Base Rate = $401.26
“Gold Choice 1000” (EPO $1,000 deductible) has a plan factor of 1.208.
A 34 year old male has an age factor of 1.214 and a tobacco factor of 1.075.
A 23 year old female has an age factor of 1.000, and let’s assume she doesn’t smoke and therefore doesn’t need a tobacco factor to be added. Find the numbers here for each member of your family and make a note of them.
Let’s assume that these two hypothetical consumers live in Rating Area 9, so we apply an area factor of 0.759 to both of them. Find your own county in the table to get your area factor.
Now we just have to pull out a calculator and do some quick math:
34 Male: 401.26 (base) x 1.208 (plan) x 1.214 (age) x 1.075 (tobacco) = $632.59
23 Female: 401.26 (base) x 1.208 (plan) x 1.000 (age) (no tobacco factor applied) = $484.72
That gives us a monthly premium for these two hypothetical adults of $1,117.31. Their insurance is only going up 46% for the new year. Yay?
We chose Indiana for an example because it was easy to find the information once you got to the PDF in question, but if you want to know how much will my health insurance go up in 2016, go to your state Department of Insurance website and you’ll find everything you need.
Texas 2016 Health Insurance Rate Increases
Texas makes it even easier! Just go to https://wwwapps.tdi.state.tx.us/inter/asproot/life/aca/results.asp and find your writing company. Click “Review Complete” beside it. That will get you to a page like this showing average rate increases and other data. It’s less specific to you, but if you want a copy of the rate filing you just have to send an open records request to lifehealth@tdi.texas.gov and include the state tracking number from this PDF in your request. That’s the state tracking number, not the SERFF tracking number.
Oh, and if you currently have Assurant Health, you’ll need to shop for a new plan. They’re winding down their health insurance business and will no longer offer the products.
Colorado 2016 Health Insurance Rate Increases
There are easy instructions on how to use the system. You can search preliminary filings here, An example filing for Colorado 2016 health insurance rates can be found here. It’s a bit more data to go through, but the data is still there for your convenience.
2016 Health Insurance Rate Increases For All States
In most cases, you can get the information from your state Department of Insurance website. You can also find information, in some cases, from the exchange though your state DOI is most likely to have the most current and most complete data. Don’t forget that health insurance open enrollment is coming up shortly. Plan on what you’ll need to do to accomodate for the changes, because just about everyone will end up with an increase. If you’re eligible for subsidies, great. If not, shop wisely.
Don’t forget you can get affordable renters insurance to help offset some of the increase in your health insurance next year!