Over the past five years, Minnesotans who buy their own insurance have experienced unprecedented changes that make it difficult to budget for the care they need.

Between 2014 and today, medical bills have been difficult to predict. In 2015, medical bills for independently insured Minnesotans soared to an average of $483 per month, then dipped to $351 per month in 2017, then increasing again last year to $369 per month.Those dramatic swings in per-person medical bills led insurance companies and state increase premiums. Those increases stopped in 2018, and again in 2019, when on average the state’s premium security program, also called reinsurance, helped lower premiums people pay each month by 20 percent on average. 

Consistency is the key to making sure Minnesotans who buy their own insurance can predict how much to budget for their health care from one year to the next. Policymakers in Saint Paul can help protect against unpredictable health insurance expenses by extending reinsurance, a program that’s proven to work. Reinsurance doesn’t make health care less expensive. But it does a lot to keep health insurance premiums from rising.

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People who buy their own health insurance bear the brunt of uncertainty in health care. Wide swings between unsustainable losses and unexpected gains continued in 2018.