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2015 Group & Individual Health Insurance Proposed Rate Increases for Long Island

  As most of you are aware, health insurance premiums on Long Island and NYC have been going up each and every year at an unsustainable rate. Increasing utilization, rising hospital and prescription costs, and pure waste in the system all do their part in driving up costs.

For the past 25 years as an insurance broker in Medford NY, I have seen average yearly insurance rate increases in the 10-13% range. Happily for this year, we see a mix of similar rate requests from some carriers, while others are much lower or even going down!

We are also seeing individual health insurance rates increasing more than group health insurance rates, something we had predicted in the past as we expect individual utilization to outpace utilization for the group market. This is seen by every insurance carrier who writes both individual as well as group health insurance.

Below is a chart showing the carrier on the left, along with their proposed Small Group (SG) requested rate increase, and their proposed Individual rate increase. If carriers do not write one or the other, it shows N/A.

Please call us with any questions you might have. Keep in mind these are PROPOSED rates, and the NY Department of Financial Services can either approve or disapprove and modify the requests.

 

-James Eckardt, RHU – Registered Health Underwriter

President – Peak Advisors, Inc.

 

Carrier                              SG Proposed Rates vs 2014                         Individual Proposed Rates vs 2014

Aetna                                25%                                                            25%

Empire BCBS                      18-25% depending on plan                            18-25% depending on plan

Health Republic                  5.5%                                                           rumored 10-11%

North Shore LIJ                  DOWN 14%                                                  0%

Oscar                                N/A                                                            5-10% gold plans

Oxford/United                   15%                                                            15% +