The past couple of weeks have been pretty brutal for the Oregon health insurance market.
On May 21st, Providence Health Plan announced that they were shutting down pretty much their entire insurance division across Oregon (which also impacts some people in Washington and California):
Providence Health & Services plans to exit most of its Oregon health insurance business next year, citing rising costs, tougher regulation and intensifying competition from national insurers — a move that will force hundreds of thousands of Oregonians to find new coverage.
...Providence Health Plan, based in Portland, is Oregon’s third-largest health insurer, covering more than 421,000 Oregonians. It also covers over 13,000 members in Washington and 4,800 in California.
Every year around this time I start my annual individual & small group market rate filing analysis project. This involves spending months painstakingly tracking every insurance carrier rate filing for the upcoming year to determine just how much average insurance policy premiums on the individual market are projected to change.
Carriers tendency to jump in and out of the market, repeatedly revise their requests, and the confusing blizzard of actual filing forms sometimes make it next to impossible to find the specific data I need.
The actual data I need to compile my estimates are actually fairly simple, however. I really only need three pieces of information for each carrier:
Mending Health Notifies Maine Bureau of Insurance that it Will Cease Offering Health Insurance Plans
AUGUSTA, ME – Mending Health, formerly known as Taro Health, has notified the Maine Bureau of Insurance that it will no longer offer health insurance as of January 1, 2027.
Mending Health’s approximately 1,100 members will keep their health plans through the end of their existing plan year.
Individuals/families who obtained Mending coverage through CoverME.gov, or who purchased a plan directly from Mending Health, can select a new plan with another health insurance company during the annual open enrollment period beginning November 1, 2026. New coverage will take effect January 1, 2027.
As of today, I've compiled the preliminary 2027 rate filings for the ACA-compliant individual and small group markets across 25 states (including the District of Columbia). So far, the weighted average increases being requested range from as little as 6.5% in Vermont to as much as 22.9% in Alaska. Interestingly, both of these states already have some of the highest individual market premiums for unsubsidized enrollees in the nation...over $1,000 per month per enrollee.
