The average premiums of gold, silver and bronze plans being bought through the state and federal marketplaces will spike between 11% and nearly 14% from 2015 to 2016, according to new data released Wednesday by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Silver plans have an average premium of $296 in 2016, gold premiums are an average of $358 and bronze premiums average about $242, according to the only nationally comprehensive public data set that includes information on all plans offered in the health insurance marketplaces in 2015 and 2016.
The data also shows that price ranges for all plans are broadening.
It would be reasonable to expect that as insurers test what works three years into their participation on the marketplace, they would begin to refine their products and become more similar to one another, said Katherine Hempstead, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's director of coverage. But that's not the case.
“It makes me think carriers are trying a lot of different plan designs and combining cost-sharing in different ways, and we're still in a market that's still evolving and there's not a standard product out there,” Hempstead said.
Midwestern states saw some of the biggest changes in premium costs, Hempstead said. Many of the states that had the biggest increases had lower prices last year, she noted. Alaska saw the biggest premium increase this year, with silver plan premiums increasing by an average of 35.6%, or $169. Hawaii, the other noncontiguous state, also saw relatively large increases across plans.
The massive data set, called HIX Compare, will allow journalists, researchers and any interested members of the public to examine a wide variety of factors involving demographics, coverage and costs, with data broken down by states, plan rank, insurers and a wide variety of other fields. It includes information on premiums, deductibles and out-of-pocket maximums, as well as cost-sharing requirements.
Click here to check out the data for yourself. Modern Healthcare's data team will be reviewing the massive file in the coming weeks.
