The healthcare roller coaster continues to rise and fall in Washington, and the Senate debates a new healthcare plan that would largely eliminate the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and implement new laws regarding premiums, policies, and Medicaid policy.
Many opponents of the ACA cite departing insurance companies as a main concern of the ACA, and some areas of the country report that there won’t even be insurance offered through the ACA in the coming year.
Luckily residents of Colorado don’t have to wonder about the future of the ACA as a recent report indicated that all Colorado counties would be covered by at least one of the major insurance companies as part of the ACA in 2018. That’s good news for Colorado residents is that they can be covered no matter where they live, the bad news is that premiums will also likely rise in Colorado in 2018.
A dozen health insurance carriers recently met Monday’s deadline to submit their 2018 ACA plans and premium for the individual and small group markets to Colorado’s Division of Insurance. The news comes at a welcome time after Wall Street analysts predicted that the major insurance companies would leave some parts of Colorado without ACA plans.
A lot of the analysts pointed to Anthem as a major insurance carrier to likely dropped out but luckily for Colorado residents that don’t seem to be the case, at least for 2018. Anthem is the primary insurance carrier for many mountain and rural counties, and the only provider for some Colorado counties.
Democratic State Representative Kerry Donovan has made a priority of getting more insurance options to people all over the state, but she blames the air in Washington as a major hurdle. “That’s when politics is getting in the way of helping the people of Colorado. I’m not OK with that,” Donovan said.
Though all counties will have individual insurance providers, residents shouldn’t be surprised to see a hike in their monthly premiums. “Prices will go up again, and selection will still be limited,” said Donovan.
Health insurance in mountain towns is especially costly for insurance carriers due to the cost of the treatment in those regions though those residents will have insurance to choose from, at least for the time being. Currently, approximately six percent of Coloradans buy their health insurance through an ACA policy.
