- Why so much turnover in mayor's office?
- Hearing on the Ruby Hill towers
- Let freedom ring
- Promoting socialized medicine
- Immigration Laws or Lack Thereof
- Atheist Diversionary Tactics
- The "Melting Pot" is unique to America
- Many mighty hearts covering the world
- Roan Drilling Bad for Colorado, country
- Americans entitled to universal health care
Eliminate Discriminatory Rate Factors
This Speakout has not been edited
By Rep. Anne McGihon, (D-Denver) and Rep. Tom Massey, (R-Poncha Springs)
Rather, this important legislation supports a proven key component of effective health care reform by protecting consumers from insurance rates based on health status and claims history. Our measure is designed to support small-business owners, especially in rural areas. It also paves the way for implementation in the next three to five years of the large-scale reforms we expect from the Commission's work.
A growing and vital driver in the Colorado economy, small businesses make up 70 percent of all firms in Colorado. What's disheartening, though, is that 63 percent of uninsured Coloradans work in small businesses with fewer than 50 employees.
With health insurance premiums rising 5.5 times more quickly than real earnings, owners of small firms often are faced with the difficult decision to either "thin down" health insurance coverage or discontinue it altogether.
Employer-sponsored health insurance is declining in Colorado at a rate greater than the national average. Moreover, evidence suggests a direct correlation between the runaway cost of health insurance premiums and the staggering number of uninsured Coloradoans.
Consider the facts: Colorado is among the states with the nation's highest insurance premiums - even California has lower insurance rates. Despite having the country's seventh-highest per capita income, Colorado has 774,000 uninsured consumers. That equates to nearly one out of every five people, well above the national rate.
For the state's small businesses and their employees, one critical driver of high health insurance premiums is the "rating up" of small groups by insurance carriers. Currently, Colorado has seven rating adjustment factors, or "rate bands," that allow insurers to increase premiums for small businesses. The two most damaging and discriminatory rate factors for small business are health status and claims experience.
Since 2003, with the passage of House Bill 1163, insurance carriers can discriminate against small groups by rating up groups whose members have health conditions as minor as allergies, or have accessed the health care system numerous times. If your child needs ear tubes, or if you went for medical care a few times for a bad knee, insurance rates for everyone in your small firm can be increased by as much as 10 percent per policy.
It is also possible to receive a discount from insurers if your small business has exceptionally healthy employees - and if you don't get rated up by one of the other five rating adjustment factors (geography, industry, tobacco use, age, family composition).
But no group can go for too long without someone developing a health problem and/or filing a claim. Eventually, every small business will be rated up at some point. When employers find that the cost to insure the group is too expensive, these employees and their families enter the ranks of the uninsured, driving up everyone's costs by deferring preventive care and using emergency departments for primary care.
This is contrary to the purpose of insurance, which is to spread the risk. Insurance should pool a wide group of health care consumers to achieve economies of scale and thereby spread risk broadly.
These particular rate factors - health status and claims experience - not only discriminate against consumers and small businesses, but also are proven to increase administrative costs for insurance carriers.
We eagerly anticipate the findings of the 208 Commission and implementation of comprehensive health care reform for all Coloradans. By eliminating these two rate factors now, we are protecting our small businesses from potential increases of up to 50 percent over a period of three to five years.
House Bill 1355 actively supports the work of the 208 Commission and ends a system that forces small-business employees into the uninsured population.
The problem with health care is....the insurance companies. What has happened to everyone's memory.. We lived for over a hundred years without health insurance. Do a lillte homework. The outlandlish health care costs has been mostly caused by one single force. The health care insurance companies themselves. They raise rates, control doctors and hospitals..then pay the CEO's millions of dollars in slaries. I have lived 39 years without health insurance.
Do away with them all!