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Another basic expense could soon be going up again for many Oregonians, as health insurers for individuals and small businesses seek significant increases to the rates they can charge.
One year after getting a median rate increase of around 10%, the same insurers are looking, in 2026, to increase rates by a median 10% more.
Last year notwithstanding, it’s a far bigger pay bump than the insurers have historically requested in Oregon, according to a WW review of filings dating back to 2013.
Such rate increases are part of an annual cycle, and late summer is when the next year’s rates generally get finalized. Every year, the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation reviews and approves rates for Affordable Care Act—compliant health insurance plans sold to individuals and small employers—which the state says cover about 13% of Oregonians. (The rate approval process does not apply to bigger employer-based plans, or government-funded insurance like Medicare or Medicaid, which cover far more people overall but are affected by similar big-picture market dynamics.)
The state lists the pending requests online. For example, the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Northwest has asked Oregon regulators for permission to raise its rates next year by an overall 12.9%, a change that would affect roughly 33,000 individual policy holders, according to state records. The Kaiser group plan, in contrast, is seeking a smaller rate bump of 6.6%, which records show would affect about 26,000 members.
Meanwhile, the Providence Health Plan is seeking an 8.1% rate increase in Oregon for individuals, affecting roughly 40,000 members. And it seeks a 21.5% rate increase for groups, affecting another 38,000 or so members.
What those members may ultimately pay will vary. A rate is the base price from which premiums are calculated, and a given member’s premium may ultimately increase more or less than the plan’s overall rate change, depending on factors like age, plan type and tobacco use.
When considering a rate request, the state says it looks at, among other things, recent and projected medical care and drug costs, and recent rate change history.
The Oregon Legislature has established a 3.4% target for health care cost growth annually. The state says the figure does not preclude health insurers from requesting a greater rate increase. Rather it “serves as a discussion point about the drivers of health care costs across the market.”
Oregon is not the only place where premiums are poised to jump. A KFF Health System Tracker review of rate-change requests on the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplace found that the median proposed premium increase for 2026 is the largest that insurers have requested in years—a change it attributes primarily to the rising use of health care services, and the rising cost of providing those services.
Another factor, KFF notes, is the sunsetting of COVID-era temporary enhanced tax credits for people who got health insurance through the ACA marketplace. This is expected to result in some healthier people dropping their insurance altogether, thus generally raising rates for less healthy people in the pool that keep their health coverage.
