Via @McKinsey: Low-price exchange plans ↑ premiums, high-price ↓. What you’d expect in a newly competitive market. pic.twitter.com/ThHgjFJsPf
— Larry Levitt (@larry_levitt) September 24, 2014
The important thing to remember is that 2014 was a beta test year for Obamacare. Some insurers went into the market with loss leader membership build strategies, others went in with a reasonable price sustainability model, others went in with a hyper cautious approach. Some insurers had optimistic pricing models, others projected a much sicker enrolled population than they actually got.
2015 is the first significant readjustment and the market is acting pretty much as we should expect markets for minimally differentiated products. Plans that were underpriced are seeing their pricing go up, plans that are overpriced are seeing cost reductions. It is almost like the market structure could work.