2026 Gross Rate Changes - Georgia: +33.5%; ~1.3 million enrollees are in for a hell of a shock this fall (updated)

Originally posted 7/21/25; See important updates below.

It's a little awkward to try & pull quotes from Georgia's actuarial memos because they're heavily redacted (see attachments below), but fortunately I also have access to other "just the facts" filing documents which include the hard data I need to compile my weighted averages. These forms--officially called "Rate Filing Transmittal Form LH-T1" and "Unified Rate Review" forms--include, among lots of other numbers, the preliminary avg. rate change being requested for the carrier's individual (or small group) market plans, as well as the number of current effectuated enrollees they have.

In addition, I have alternate rate filings for Georgia individual market carriers which specifically state what their requested rate changes would be if the enhanced premium tax credit subsidies provided by the American Rescue Plan Act & Inflation Reduction Act were to be extended for at least one more year, providing a clear apples to apples comparison.

Overall, Georgia ACA carriers are requesting a weighted average increase of 20.4%...which happens to be almost exactly the average of the 18 other states I've compiled preliminary analyses of. If the IRA subsidies were to be extended, the weighted average increase for unsubsidized enrollees would be 6.8 points lower, or 13.6%.

It's important to note that the combined enrollment of all 9 carriers (Mending Health is newly entering the market this fall, while Aetna/CVS is dropping out of the entire ACA exchange market nationally) only totals around 1.2 million people. This is a bit of a head-scratcher as on-exchange enrollment alone is over 1.5 million in Georgia this year; with off-exchange enrollees included it's likely more like 1.6 million.

Now, a chunk of the "missing" ~400K or so can be found in Aetna/CVS policies, although there were only around 94,000 enrolled via Aetna/CVS in 2024, so unless they quadrupled their ACA individual market enrollment this year (possible but not likely), I'm not sure what would account for the remaining ~300K or so.

Anyway, that's the GA indy market. I only have one of the filings for the small group market in the Peach State, so I'll hold off on posting that table for now.

UPDATE 7/23/25: I've found additional documents in the filing records which bump up the enrollment for a few of the carriers slightly, along with a just-released filing for a 10th carrier (Peach State Health Plan). Combined, these nudge the total enrollment up by around 50,000 more people while also nudging the weighted average rate hike up slightly more (to 20.7%). The portion due to IRA subsidy expiration is also slightly higher at 7.1%

The table below has been revised with these updates:

UPDATE 7/23/25: Meanwhile, I've also acquired the filings for the small group market carriers (except for one, Cigna, which may be dropping out of the market?). Overall they're looking at a relatively modest (at least compared to the indy market) rate hike of 9.5% on average.

UPDATE 8/15/25: Hoo boy. I just received the raw revised filings from every Georgia carrier as of 2 days ago, with 6 asking for even higher rate increases while 3 have shaved a few points off of their requested hikes. Only one carrier (Cigna) hasn't changed their filing, although it was already one of the highest to begin with.

There's also a couple of conflicting numbers in the new filings: Alliant lists their current enrollment total as 70,102 in multiple locations but also lists it as just half of that, 33,565, on the justification summary itself. In addition, CareSource's revised rate hike is either 29.2% or 15.9% depending on which filing form you use, while Kaiser's is either 15.6% or 17.2%:

While all three of these are large discrepancies by themselves, all three make for a nominal change to the overall landscape; if I use the alternate numbers for each the weighted average only changes by a further 0.3 points.

In any event, when I plug in the revised rate hikes (some carriers also slightly tweaked their current enrollment numbers), the overall weighted average rate increase for Georgia carriers jumps from 20.7% to a stunning 33.5%.

The updated table below also notes that there's still something like ~120,000 "missing" enrollees overall; this assumes the national 6.6% net attrition rate applies to Georgia specifically. If GA is seeing a higher attrition rate than the national average (which is highly likely due to them transitioning from the federal exchange to their own platform last fall), that could explain the difference.