Health plans are expecting 2023 premiums to increase by 7.2% for Group fully-insured plans and by 6.4% for Individual plans.
For Group plans, this growth is 1.6 percentage points higher than their expectations for 2022. For Individual plans, growth expectations are higher by 3.6 percentage points. Individual members include all who purchase insurance individually who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid.
After the effect of buy-downs, plans anticipate premium increases for Group plans of 6.1% and 5.6% for Individual plans. A buy-down is a change in a product’s benefit design to secure a lower premium.
For plans participating in this survey, we infer their projected medical cost increases of 5.4% for Group plans and 4.3% for Individual plans. This is based on their anticipated MLR decrease for Groups of 1.4 percentage points and a decrease of 1.7 percentage points for Individual plans.
Similarly, we estimate an increase in consumer cost sharing of 9.5% for Group plans and 8.2% for Individuals.