DENVER – Colorado’s Health Care Future (COHCF) today submitted a public comment to the state’s Division of Insurance (DOI) regarding the Colorado Option rulemaking process.

Read COHCF’s comment letter below:

Dear Commissioner Conway:

Thank you for the opportunity to provide written comments related to the Colorado Division of Insurance’s (DOI) April 15 rulemaking hearing. We wish to share our significant concerns regarding the Colorado Option’s continued negative consequences for Colorado residents.

Colorado’s Health Care Future believes every Coloradan deserves access to affordable health coverage and high-quality care, and improving our health care system is a goal that we can all agree on. However, the Colorado Option continues to fall short of the promises its supporters made that it would improve affordability and increase consumer choice in the state.

Despite assurances that premiums would be lower and coverage choices would increase for consumers, Coloradans are experiencing the exact opposite. 2024 Colorado Option premiums increased seven percent over 2023 rates, which follows another significant increase from the 2022 to 2023 plan years. The statute that created the Colorado Option promised that consumers would see 10 percent premium reductions in 2024 – instead, Coloradans are again being forced to shoulder unaffordable premium increases.

A recent report by Lanhee J. Chen, Ph.D., Tom Church, and Daniel Heil, enclosed herein, found that just 15 percent of plans met the state’s initial-year premium targets, and even fewer plans met the state’s second-year targets. It’s a simple fact that in many counties, consumers would spend more to enroll in the Colorado Option than in traditional health plans. The price controls in the Colorado Option are not delivering the promised cost reduction for consumers.

At the same time, the Colorado Option is harming competition by driving four health insurance providers out of the state’s individual or small group markets since its implementation, and its unsustainable price controls will make it very difficult to attract any new health plans to the state.

To date, enrollment in the Colorado Option represents just 1.5 percent of the state’s population, despite the DOI putting its finger on the scale to boost enrollment. This state government-controlled health insurance system is not driving a significant increase in coverage, and its enrollment is nowhere near the number of enrollees that would be needed to achieve meaningful, sustainable reform within the health coverage market.

Yet despite these realities, DOI continues to tout the Colorado Option as a success. In doing so, DOI often conflates the policy with Colorado’s reinsurance plan, a separate program that, unlike the Colorado Option, has successfully generated savings for state residents. As DOI knows, the Colorado Option is not responsible for these savings and the continued suggestion otherwise creates confusion and misleads consumers about the true efficacy of the Colorado Option.

While the DOI rulemaking process provides an important opportunity for stakeholders to provide input, it will not be able to change the fact that the legislation behind the Colorado Option is fundamentally flawed. This state government-controlled health insurance system will not bring the savings and consumer choice that its supporters promised.

We appreciate the opportunity to share our concerns throughout the rulemaking process. Colorado’s Health Care Future is committed to working together so that every Coloradan has access to high-quality, affordable health coverage and care. Instead of continuing to press forward with the failed Colorado Option, we urge Colorado policymakers to build on what is already working in our current health care system to improve affordability and increase access to care.