Insurer Filings Suggest COVID-19 Pandemic Will Not Drive Health Spending In 2022

This brief reviews final 2022 premium rate filings for Marketplace-participating individual market insurers in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Although the ACA individual market represents a small share of the privately insured population, the rate filings for this market are detailed and publicly accessible, making them a useful source of information on how health insurers are thinking about their likely costs for the next year.

Most of the 311 rate filings reviewed,We find that most insurers expect spending and utilization to return to pre-pandemic levels in 2022 and do not expect COVID-19 to affect costs in the individual market. A majority of rate changes for 2022 are moderate, with most insurers posting premium increases or decreases of a few percentage points.

The brief is available on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, an online information hub dedicated to monitoring and assessing the performance of the U.S. health system.