Health premiums to rise in single digits nationwide

LOVELAND — Single-digit increases in health insurance premiums are not restricted to Colorado. Nationwide, increases will be 3.6 to 4.1 percent in 2019.

Misty Baker, director of compliance for BenefitMall, a Dallas, Texas, headquartered company that provides client companies with employee benefit solutions, told participants in an insurance symposium on Friday that rate increases will be significantly less than they were in 2018. She was one of multiple speakers at the 2018 Flood & Peterson Symposium.

The Colorado Division of Insurance reported last week that individual insurance plan increases will average 5.6 percent and small group plans will increase an average 7.28 percent.

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“Confusion in the insurance marketplace has lessened,” Baker said. Nationwide, “93 percent of carriers are either expanding or maintaining their Affordable Care Act business in 2019,” she said. “This is good news for you.”

Baker said companies that offer insurance to employers, along with their health insurers, will continue to shift costs to dependents of employees. But, “don’t look for big innovation in 2019. You won’t be seeing changes in plans in the coming year,” Baker said.

In 2019, the individual mandate — which required all Americans to have health insurance — has been repealed as part of federal tax law changes. Still, most insurance companies expect little impact on numbers of people who buy insurance.

Baker said about 36 percent of insurers will restrict the size of provider networks, which is not necessarily good news for consumers who benefit more from large networks. Restricting the size of networks helps insurers control costs of care.

The other change for 2019 will be access to short-term health plans, which were limited in prior years. Short-term plans can usually be bought for lower premiums.

“Carriers are warming to short-term health plans, but consumers need to remember that these are not full insurance policies and don’t cover everything,” she said. Pre-existing conditions, for example, are not necessarily covered.

“The problem is some people see the price tag, which is lower, and then don’t see what it actually covers. They are an option, but they have drawbacks,” she said.

Baker also discussed association plans — a term applied to insurance plans that are offered by trade associations as a way to spread health-care costs over more people and drive down premium costs. States can authorize association plans, and Colorado has not done so, she said. The concern about association plans is that eventually only companies with the highest health-care costs will be members of them because companies with healthy employees can usually find lower costs in other ways, she said.