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Utah exchange overview
Utah uses the federally run health insurance exchange, where residents can review 2023 plans offered by six carriers. The average rate change for Utah’s marketplace plans amounted to an increase of 6%, but subsidies are designed to keep pace with the cost of the benchmark plan in each area.
Bright HealthCare joined the Utah exchange in 2022, but opted to leave the market at the end of 2022, after only offering plans for one year (Bright’s decision to exit the market is applicable in every state where they offered individual/family plans).
The ACA’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility took effect in Utah in January 2020.
Frequently asked questions about Utah's ACA marketplace
The open enrollment period for individual/family health insurance runs from November 1 to January 15 in Utah. Outside of open enrollment, a qualifying event is necessary to enroll or make changes to your coverage.
If you have questions about enrollment opportunities, check out our comprehensive guide to open enrollment and our comprehensive guide to special enrollment periods.
There are six insurers offering health plans for 2023 through Utah’s exchange. Coverage areas vary from one insurer to another, but plans are available from the following insurers for 2023:
- BridgeSpan
- Cigna
- Molina
- Regence
- SelectHealth (plans available statewide)
- University of Utah Health Plans (plans available statewide)
Bright HealthCare was new to the Utah exchange for 2022, but their plans are no longer available after the end of 2022, and cannot be purchased for 2023 coverage.
On October 27, 2015—just five days before the start of the 2016 open enrollment period—the Utah Department of Insurance announced that Arches Health Plan (an ACA-created CO-OP) had been placed in receivership and state regulators would oversee the winding down of the carrier’s operations. Existing members (roughly a quarter of Utah’s exchange enrollees in 2015) had to select coverage from another carrier in order to have coverage in place on January 1.
In addition to Arches closing their doors, two smaller carriers in Utah—BridgeSpan and Altius (Coventry/Aetna) exited the exchange at the end of 2015 (for all three carriers, the risk corridor shortfall announced in October 2015 was a major factor). Bridgespan and Altius continued to offer plans outside the exchange in Utah in 2016 (as noted below, BridgeSpan is rejoining the exchange for 2020 in Weber and Davis counties).
But University of Utah Health Plans joined the exchange for 2016, with coverage available in nine counties (Salt Lake, Utah, Weber, Davis, Tooele, Box Elder, Wasatch, Morgan, and Summit). UUHP continued to expand their coverage area, offering plans in 16 counties in 2017 and expanding to all 29 counties in 2018.
With three carriers leaving the exchange and one joining, Utah had a total of four carriers offering individual plans through the exchange in 2016: Humana Medical Plan of Utah, Molina, SelectHealth (only insurer offering plans statewide as of 2016), and University of Utah Health Plans
Humana exited the exchange at the end of 2016, leaving three insurers offering plans for 2017. And Molina left at the end of 2017. So for 2018, SelectHealth and UUHP were the only insurers offering plans in Utah’s exchange.
But Molina rejoined the exchange in 2019, BridgeSpan rejoined the exchange for 2020, and Cigna joined the exchange for 2020, bringing the total number of participating insurers to five in Utah’s exchange. And for 2021, Regence joined the exchange — after previously offering plans outside the exchange — bringing the number of participating insurers to six.
For 2022, Bright Health joined the Utah exchange, bringing the total number of insurers to seven. But Bright will no longer offer plans in Utah (or five other states) after the end of 2022.
For 2023, six insurers are continuing to offer coverage through Utah’s exchange (one additional insurer, Bright HealthCare, is no longer offering plans after the end of 2022). They implemented the following average rate changes for 2023, amounting to about a 6% increase.:
- Molina: 0.6% increase
- SelectHealth: 6.1% increase
- University of Utah Health Plans: 0.9% increase
- BridgeSpan: 6.4% increase
- Cigna: 6.6% increase
- Regence: 13.25% increase
But there are some caveats to keep in mind whenever we talk about average rate increases in the health insurance exchange:
- The rate changes only apply to full-price plans, whereas most enrollees get premium subsidies that offset some of their cost (of the Utah residents who enrolled during the open enrollment period for 2022 coverage, nearly 94% were receiving premium subsidies). For people who get subsidies, the net rate change depends on how their own plan’s rates change, as well as any changes in their premium subsidy amount (which depends on the cost of the benchmark plan, as well as projected income for the coming year).
- Overall average annual rate changes don’t account for the fact that premiums increase with age. Even if your health insurance company has a 0% rate change, your premium will still go up from one year to the next, simply because you’re a year older.
- A weighted average, by definition, lumps all the plans together. But different insurers offer plans in each region, and each insurer’s rate change is different. So the rate change that applies to a specific enrollee can vary quite a bit from the average.
For perspective, here’s a look at how premiums changed in Utah’s individual market starting in 2015:
2015: Average rate increase of 5.7% (an analysis by the Commonwealth Fund put the increase slightly lower, at 5%). Across the entire individual market, including on and off-exchange policies, the weighted average rate increase in Utah was 7.6 percent for 2015.
The modest rate increases were especially good news considering rates in Utah were already lower than the national average. For 2014 plans, across all age groups, the average lowest-cost bronze plan in Utah was $201/month before subsidies, compared with a national average of $249. A report released in February 2014 found that Davis and Salt Lake were among the least expensive regions to purchase health insurance in the US; the two-county region ranked 7th on a list of the ten least expensive health insurance areas.
2016: Three carriers offered plans in Utah’s exchange for 2016. Humana increased their premiums by an average of 24%, Molina decreased theirs by an average of 0.34%, and SelectHealth increased premiums by an average of 16.7%. Average benchmark premiums (second-lowest-cost plan premiums) increased by 15.8% in Utah for 2016.
2017: 31% average increase. For the three carriers (SelectHealth, Molina, and UUHP) that offered individual plans in the exchange in Utah in 2017, the weighted average approved rate increase—across on and off-exchange enrollment—was 31.1%. But that has to also be viewed in light of the fact that Utah’s 2016 premiums were far lower than the national average in 2016.
Once plan selections for 2016 were finalized, the average pre-subsidy premium was just $271/month, which was by far the lowest of the 38 states that used Healthcare.gov in 2016 (the second-lowest was Arizona, at $324/month; the average pre-subsidy premium across the 38 Healthcare.gov states in 2016 was $396/month). Jaakob Sundberg, an actuary for the Utah Department of Insurance, explained that health insurance coverage in Utah “was definitely underpriced prior to this (2017 rate increases)” and said that the 2017 rates were the first time he saw appropriate pricing for ACA-qualified plans in Utah.
The Utah Insurance Department has a comprehensive website explaining the rate review process, and rates for a 21-year-old for each plan in each county (the rates don’t take subsidies into account; after subsidies, rates are lower).
2018: The following average rate increases were implemented for 2018 in Utah’s exchange:
- SelectHealth: 44% overall average rate increase. But the average increase was just 14% for bronze and catastrophic plans, and 21% for gold plans. Much of the overall average increase was driven by the fact that silver plans increased in price by an average of 57%. This is because the cost of CSR was added to silver plan rates for 2018. SelectHealth covered 119,094 people on their ACA-compliant individual market plans in 2017.
- University of Utah Health Plans: 30.8%. The rate filing summary noted that “UUHP’s premium increase is primarily tied to the potential loss of Cost Share Reduction subsidy payments” and the cost of CSR was added to silver plan premiums for 2018.
Cost-sharing reductions (CSR) reduce out-of-pocket costs for low-income enrollees who pick silver plans. Until October 2017, the federal government reimbursed insurers for the cost of providing better coverage to these enrollees, but the funding became the subject of a lawsuit in 2014. House Republicans sued the Obama Administration, arguing that the money for cost-sharing reductions was never appropriated by Congress. They won the lawsuit in 2016, but the Obama administration appealed and the money continued to flow to insurers until the Trump administration terminated it in October 2017.
In the spring and summer of 2017, however, states and insurers didn’t know what action the Trump administration would ultimately take—and the question of CSR funding was crucial to the rate-setting process for 2018. The Utah Insurance Department issued a bulletin on June 2, clarifying that insurers’ rate filings should be based on the assumption that cost-sharing reductions would not continue to be funded in 2018. This is the approach that nearly every state ended up taking by October (especially after the Trump administration officially terminated CSR funding), but it was a fairly rare approach in early June. The idea was that if the Trump administration or Congress had committed to funding cost-sharing reductions over the summer, insurers in Utah would have been able to file new rates, reflecting the change. But that did not happen.
So silver plan rates became disproportionately high in 2018, and that has continued ever since. This results in larger premium subsidies, since subsidy amounts are tied to the cost of the benchmark silver plan. This makes non-silver plans more affordable for people who receive premium subsidies.
2019: Molina exited Utah’s exchange at the end of 2017, but rejoined the exchange for 2019. On-exchange plans were available in Utah for 2019 from three insurers: Molina, SelectHealth, and University of Utah Health Insurance Plans. Two other insurers — Regence and BridgeSpan — only offered plans outside the exchange (BridgeSpan began to offer on-exchange plans in the Odgen area in 2020).
A quick backstory on Molina: The insurer offered 2017 exchange plans in nine states (California, Florida, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Texas, Utah, Washington, Wisconsin). By June 2017, they had submitted initial filings for 2018 plans in all nine of those states. But their second-quarter report noted that marketplace performance had been “most disappointing” in four states: Florida, Utah, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Molina explained that during the second quarter, medical costs amounted to 127% of premiums collected for exchange plans in Utah and Wisconsin — a clearly unsustainable amount (for reference, the ACA requires individual market insurers to spend at least 80% of premiums on medical costs and quality improvement; anything over 100% means that the insurer is spending more on claims than they’re collecting in premiums, and that’s before administrative costs have been paid).
As a result of the unsustainable losses, Molina exited the exchanges in both Utah and Wisconsin at the end of 2017. But they rejoined both states’ exchanges for 2019. Their Utah rate filing for 2019 indicated that they had more than 69,000 enrollees in the state in 2017, although they did not have any in 2018. (Technically, Molina did not completely exit the individual market in Utah in 2018. They continued to offer one off-exchange gold plan, but it was not actively marketed and did not have any enrollees.) By 2019, after rejoining the exchange and offering plans in nine counties, Molina had 448 enrollees, so their market share was a very small fraction of Utah’s ACA-compliant individual market.
The following average rate changes were approved for 2019 individual market plans:
- Molina: 23.3% increase (this didn’t directly affect any enrollees, as Molina did not have any enrollment in 2018).
- SelectHealth: 2.62% decrease. Plans are available statewide.
- University of Utah Health Plans: 0.72% increase or a 0.62% decrease, depending on the plan. Plans are available statewide, but with different networks depending on the county.
2020: BridgeSpan rejoined Utah’s exchange in 2020, and Cigna joined Utah’s exchange for 2020. The four insurers that already offered plans in 2019 all decreased their average premiums for 2020. Regence, which only offered plans outside the exchange prior to 2021, implemented an average rate decrease of about 10% for 2020.
2021: Utah’s marketplace had six participating insurers in 2021, including newcomer Regence. They implemented the following average rate changes:
- Molina: 1.6% average decrease (Molina only had 448 enrollees in 2019, but that had grown to nearly 4,000 as of 2020).
- SelectHealth: 1.6% average decrease.
- University of Utah Health Plans: 3% average increase. Plans are available statewide, but with different networks depending on the county.
- BridgeSpan: 9.9% average decrease (second year in a row with a significant rate decrease).
- Cigna: 2.3% average increase.
- Regence: 7.05% average decrease (new to the exchange for 2021, after previously offering plans outside the exchange).
2022: Average increase of about 1%. For 2022, Utah’s marketplace had seven participating insurers. They implemented the following average rate changes for 2022:
- Molina: 0.64% increase
- SelectHealth: 0.8% increase
- University of Utah Health Plans: 2.74% increase
- BridgeSpan: 5.1% decrease (third year in a row with a rate decrease).
- Cigna: 8.1% increase
- Regence: 0.37% decrease
- Bright Health: New carrier, so no applicable rate change
Across all of the existing insurers, the weighted average rate change for 2022 was about a 1% increase.
The majority of states that use HealthCare.gov saw a decline in enrollment from 2016 to 2017, but Utah bucked that trend, and had the third-highest year-over-year enrollment growth. For 2018, average enrollment declined by about 5% in states that use HealthCare.gov. While Utah did see a slight decline for 2018, it was far smaller than the average. And enrollment in Utah’s exchange grew slightly for 2019, and then reached new record highs in 2020, 2021, and 2022 (across all the states that use HealthCare.gov, enrollment declined in 2019 and 2020, increased slightly in 2021, and increased to a record-high in 2022).
Here’s a summary of enrollment totals for each year (during open enrollment) in Utah’s exchange:
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Larger premium subsidies result in lower premiums for many enrollees
Because the cost of CSR has been added to silver plan premiums in Utah, silver plan premiums increased by much larger percentages than the premiums of plans at other metal levels. Premium subsidies (premium tax credits) are based on the cost of the second-lowest-cost silver plan, so they grow to keep pace with the price of silver plans.
The addition of the cost of CSR to silver plan premiums thus resulted in much larger premium subsidies starting in 2018, which continues to be the case. And the American Rescue Plan has made premium subsidies even larger than they used to be; that provision has been extended through 2025 by the Inflation Reduction Act.
For people who select silver plans (including anyone eligible for CSR benefits who wants to partake of those benefits), the larger premium subsidies keep the after-subsidy cost of silver plans roughly comparable to what it was prior to 2018. But for people who buy plans at other metal levels, the larger premium subsidies make their after-subsidy rates much more affordable than they were in 2017 and earlier years.
As an example, consider a 45-year-old living in Salt Lake City. If he earned $25,000 in 2018, he could get a bronze plan for as little as 33 cents a month. And in 2019, his after-subsidy cost for a bronze plan (with the same $25,000 income) was as little as 13 cents a month in premiums (he could choose from among six different bronze plans that were all priced under 20 cents per month). In contrast, a 45-year-old in Salt Lake City earning $25,000/month would have had to pay at least $67/month in premiums for a bronze plan in 2017.
That drop in after-subsidy premiums — from $67 a month to under 20 cents a month — was due to the fact that the insurers began adding the cost of CSR to silver plan rates starting in 2018. They have continued to use this strategy ever since, resulting in premium subsidies that continue to be larger than they would otherwise be if the federal government were still funding CSR.
And the American Rescue Plan has made coverage even more affordable starting in 2021, as illustrated in this spreadsheet. Those enhanced affordability provisions will continue through at least 2025.
Grandmothered plans
The Utah Department of Insurance accepted the Obama Administration’s March 2014 offer to allow pre-2014 (but non-grandfathered) health plans to be extended, and by June 2014, the state’s two largest insurers had also accepted the offer.
Regence Blue Cross and Blue Shield and SelectHealth—covering a total of 60 percent of the individual health insurance market in Utah—both allowed their members with pre-2014 plans to renew their coverage in the fall of 2014.
Insureds with grandmothered plans eligible for renewal can opt to switch to an ACA-compliant plan instead, either during general open enrollment or when their plan renews (renewal of an individual plan outside of general open enrollment is a qualifying event that triggers a special enrollment period).
Grandmothered plans were initially only extended for a year, but that extension has been renewed every year since, with the final decision left up to each state. Utah has gone along with all of the extensions, allowing grandmothered plans to remain in force until if and when the federal government says otherwise. In 2022, the federal government announced that these plans can remain in effect until further notice, so it’s currently up to each insurer to decide whether to continue to renew these plans.
SHOP exchange for small businesses
Along with Massachusetts, Utah had a health insurance exchange that predated the Affordable Care Act. However, unlike the exchanges called for by the Affordable Care Act, Utah’s exchange was not open to individual consumers to purchase health insurance. That fact led to a series of discussions and negotiations between the state and the U.S. Department of Health and Humans Services (HHS), and ultimately, a unique approach to running the exchange; Utah would run the small business exchange, while the federal government would run the individual exchange via HealthCare.gov.
According to an article in The Salt Lake Tribune, by August 2013, about 350 businesses were providing health insurance to about 7,800 people through Avenue H.
In 2015, small-businesses had their choice of 75 plans from three carriers on Avenue H (Arches Mutual Insurance, SelectHealth and UnitedHealthcare of Utah), and 576 plans from seven companies that are selling small group plans outside the exchange. In 2016, Arches Mutual plans were no longer available — on or off the exchange — as the CO-OP shut down at the end of 2015.
The Utah Health Reform Task Force voted in October 2016 to turn over the state’s small business exchange to federal control, as it was costing $1.5 million in annual operating expenses. As of late 2016, Avenue H had 800 participating small businesses, with about 14,500 people enrolled. By 2017, there were two participating carriers (SelectHealth and HSA Health Plan) and only 28 available plans.
The state moved forward with the task force’s recommendation, and Avenue H stopped enrolling new groups and renewing existing groups after the end of 2017. New groups began enrolling through the federally-facilitated SHOP exchange at the end of 2017, but the federal platform had also switched to a direct-to-carrier approach in all states where it operates.
Utah health insurance exchange links
HealthCare.gov
Use the federal marketplace to enroll in individual or family coverage
Health Insurance Division Consumer Service
Assists consumers who have purchased insurance on the individual market or who have insurance through an employer who only does business in Utah.
(801) 538-3077
Utah Insurance Department; Health Division
Serves residents with health care complaints or questions.
(801) 538-9674 / Toll-Free: 1-800-439-3805 / [email protected]
State Exchange Profile: Utah
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation overview of Utah’s progress toward creating a state health insurance exchange.
Louise Norris is an individual health insurance broker who has been writing about health insurance and health reform since 2006. She has written dozens of opinions and educational pieces about the Affordable Care Act for healthinsurance.org. Her state health exchange updates are regularly cited by media who cover health reform and by other health insurance experts.
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