As of yesterday, I finally wrapped up analyzing the 2022 individual & small group health insurance market premium rate filings for all 50 states + DC.
As of this writing, I have the average *preliminary* rate changes for every state, & the *approved* changes for 19 of them. 2/
Once the remaining 32 states are locked in, the national weighted average rate increase will likely be a point or two lower, but as of right now it's around +3.9%.
This ranges from ⬇️4.8% in Arizona to ⬆️ 15.5% in New Mexico. Individual carriers vary greatly as usual. 3/
Assuming all rate requests are approved as is, avg. *UNSUBSIDIZED* #ACA premiums in 2022 will range from $409/mo in NV to an eyebrow-raising $1,171/mo in WV.
HOWEVER, thanks to the #AmRescuePlan, the VAST majority of enrollees will pay MUCH less, & millions will pay NOTHING. 4/
UPDATE: Re the racial factor: Here's the county-level COVID death rate since 6/30 for MS based on what % of the pop. is Black, according to the 2020 Census.
Note that this is based on what % of the *total* population is Black, not what % of deaths are among the Black population.
Could I also once again point out that Superman is literally a member of an alien species, which presumably means that human concepts of gender wouldn’t really apply anyway?
“Superman can’t be Black! That makes no sense!”
“Superman can’t be bisexual! That makes no sense!”
“Superman can’t cause time to reverse itself by flying around the Earth really fast and reversing its rotation! That makes no…oh, wait…”
Oh yeah: Superman can’t use a phone booth to change into his costume anymore either, since there’s no longer any phone booths. Thing change. You have to roll with it.
I really hope folks will actually read the full piece (there's over a dozen graphs & tables), but here's a couple of key ones.
First, here's the most recent breakout of COVID death rates since 6/30/21 by partisan lean. This is the graph which caused such a fuss in the 1st place:
8 days ago the death rate since June in the reddest 10th of the country was 5.5x higher than in the bluest 10th.
The author notes that Utah's COVID death rate ranks 45th nationally. That's true....since the beginning of the pandemic. However, my data specifically covers the period of the Delta variant, starting on July 1st, 2021...and Utah's death rate ranks 27th since then. 1/
Re. the author's final claim--that if I had focused on UTAH at the county level, the NY Times wouldn't have been interested--he might want to rethink that.
(I had to modify the bar groupings because there's no way of breaking Utah into even 10ths at the county level)