For Coloradans who still can’t afford the “affordable” insurance provided by the state health exchange, we have exciting news for you – it’s about to get even more expensive.
Psych!
Exchange officials assured us they could be self-sufficient once they misspent exhausted hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from the grant gravy train.
And they will be, just as soon as they hike the cost of user fees from 1.4 percent to collect nearly $3 million to handle the volume of calls pouring into the exchange, probably to complain about insurance costs.
The Denver Post reports:
“Clearly our fees are too low,” board member and finance and operations committee chair Arnold Salazar said Tuesday during a meeting of the committee.
“We are well within striking distance of sustainability,” Salazar said. “We want to make sure we have the revenue to make this sustainable.”
The Post reports that the federal exchange charges 3.5 percent, while states comparable to Colorado charge 2.5 to 3.5 percent.
But the exchange is talking about jacking up the fee as high as 4.5 percent, because math works differently in Colorado than in the rest of the world.
There are a number of scenarios being considered by the exchange to raise revenues, none that would actually cut costs. A decision is expected later this month.