Colorado Trying to Cut Health Costs

December 7, 2012

Officials from the state of Colorado say that the Affordable Care Act known colloquially as “Obamacare” has given them the power to block insurance rate hikes.

Specifically, the legislation gave Colorado the ability to block rate increase by Cigna, which had asked for a 24% increase.

According to an article in the Denver Post, Cigna wanted to raise rates on individual health policies by 31 percent in 2013, at least in several mountain counties, but the state said suck a hike just wasn’t justifiable.

Instead, the state legislature amended a law that allowed insurers to raise rates first and ask for permission afterward, because Obama care requires reviews of any rate increases greater than 10% in a given year.

Currently, Cigna covers about 21,000 people in the Rocky Mountain state. Their reason for such a dramatic increase was that hospital costs in Eagle, Garfield, Pitkin, and Routt counties are 28 percent higher than they are in the rest of rural Colorado.