Colorado’s individual health insurance market is about to feel like a bronc ride without a saddle. The Denver Post’s Meg Wingerter reports that premiums will double next year for people buying coverage on the state exchange, with higher-income families staring at five-figure hikes. That is not a rounding error. It is a gut punch.
The piece lays out the one-two hit: rising sticker prices and shrinking federal help as enhanced tax credits lapse back to pre-COVID rules. The Division of Insurance says the average subsidized enrollee will owe 101 percent more. Families just over the subsidy cliff get no help at all, with a Denver example showing a $14,000 jump for a silver plan, worse outside the Front Range. Open enrollment starts this Saturday; pick by Dec. 15 for January coverage.
The Bullet Point Brief
• Double trouble. Premiums jump and pandemic-era subsidies fade. The state pegs the average hit at 101 percent for subsidized buyers. Translation: your bill more than doubles.
• The subsidy cliff is real. A family of four around $128,000 gets zero help and could see a $14,000 spike in Denver. Rural folks, per usual, get it worse.
• Coverage drop-off ahead. Of 335,000 marketplace enrollees, about 75,000 may bail entirely. That is not a plan. That is a warning siren.
• Band-Aids and politics. Lawmakers tossed in reinsurance dollars and direct aid. It softens the blow, it does not fix the problem. Meanwhile, DC is busy arguing about extending subsidies during a shutdown. Different clowns, same circus.
• If Congress extends the boost, the state says premiums rise about 16 percent and low-income folks avoid increases. The CBO says it also hikes the federal deficit by $350 billion over a decade. Pick your poison.
My Bottom Line
This is the ripple effect of the Affordable Care Act. When politicians mandate coverage and micromanage prices, but do not honestly fund the promises, the people who actually pay end up paying more. We legalized complexity and called it compassion, then acted shocked when the bill arrived.
Want premiums to fall? Get government out of the exam room and out of the insurance design business. Let doctors and patients drive, unleash real competition across state lines, kill the subsidy cliffs that punish success, and stop virtue-signaling with legislation that loads costs onto working families. Healthcare should be care first, politics last. Right now, it is the other way around.
Source: The Denver Post
