Obamacare in Colorado: 92,200 looking for new plans and historic rate increases.
As Gardner mentioned, 92,000 Coloradans must find a new plan for 2017. Those 92,000 people include 10,549 from the UnitedHealthcare individual plans, 9,914 from the Humana individual plans, 10,000 from the Rocky Mountain Health Plans, and 62,310 from the Anthem BlueCross PPO that the insurer will no longer sell in 2017. But, wait, there’s more. The fee increases coming in 2017 will be as much as 40.6%.
That’s a lot of people re-shopping for plans, but not as many as last year when Colorado HealthOp went into bankruptcy.
At the risk of repeating myself, here are the proposed increases from the various carriers from yesterdays 9 News article.
- Anthem BCBS: 26.8%
- Bright Health: New to market
- Cigna: 9.5%
- Colorado Choice: 36.33%
- Denver Health: 0.08%
- Freedom Life: 9.98%
- Golden Rule: 40.6%
- Kaiser Foundation Health Plan: 13.6%
- National Foundation Life: 9.98%
- Rocky Mountain HMO: 34.6%
My educated guess is this is the order of plan premiums in most Colorado areas:
- Kaiser
- Bright Health
- Cigna
- Anthem/Colorado Choice (tie)
- Rocky Mountain (will be more competitive on the Western slope) <— UPDATE
Rocky Mountain is ONLY offering individual plans in Mesa County, so for practical purposes, they are dropping out of the state as well. That leaves Colorado with 3 big name insurance companies, Kaiser, Cigna and Anthem, with Colorado Choice and Bright Health offering regional coverage. In the case of Bright Health the region is limited to the Denver metro area. I will post a coverage map in the near future.
Freedom and National Life seem to be the same company. Their plans are in very limited distribution. I didn’t rank Denver Health as they offer plans in a very limited geographic area. Colorado Choice is primarily available in rural areas east of the divide. I suspect they will be about tied with Anthem.
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