Obamacare not helping mountain dwellers
Obamacare is up and running, with an impressive 7 million-plus enrollees in the federally backed health-insurance exchanges. And with the hefty numbers, the static about the website crashes and you-cankeep-your-(crappy, substandard)-policy-if-you-want-it and “death panels” is fading.
While many of us still think the Affordable Care Act is a terrible law, it’s not because of any of the unsubstantiated inanities about how it will destroy the economy and bankrupt ordinary Americans, but because it doesn’t go far enough in terms of truly socializing medicine and holding down costs like we see in Canada, Japan and England.
In the mountains, we face another problem with the new health-care system: premiums under Obamacare that are hun- dreds of dollars more than the rest of the state. In fact, the resort region defined by the state as Eagle, Garfield, Pitkin and Summit counties is the most expensive insurance marketplace in the country, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Ironically, these areas also are among the healthiest counties in the country, filled with active young people and some of the most fit, hardiest seniors in the world. Research by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation unveiled in late March shows that Eagle, Summit and Pitkin counties are among the top 10 percent in the United States in terms of health factors and outcomes.
Many of those residentswork in the low-paying, limited-benefit service industry— waiting tables, cleaning hotel rooms, selling merchandise— and are able to enjoymedical coverage for the first time through the Colorado health-insurance exchange.
That is, until they see their premiums.
Cynthia Cox, a senior policy analyst with the Kaiser Family Foundation, compared the premium rates of 501 regions across the country for the lowest-priced “silver” plan for a 40-year-old and found that person pays $462 per month in Colorado’s resort regions, but only $245 in Denver, according to the Denver Business Journal.
Health-care costs are higher in the mountains: Kaiser Health News reported the Colorado All-Payer Claims Database shows that the average hospital inpatient cost in Summit County was $786 per insured person, 61 percent above the state average, even though admissions were 10 percent below the state average. In Pitkin County, the inpatient cost is $1,932 per person, or 2.2 times higher than the state aver- age even though the number of claims filed was 17 percent lower.
Experts suggest that high rates reflect a lack of competition between insurers or health-care providers, or both, as is the case in the high country. Indeed, most of the resort communities are one-hospital towns, and coverage in the mountains is limited to only four insurance companies, compared with eight in Denver.
State insurance commissioner Marguerite Salazar insists that the higher rates for medical coverage in the resort areas is nothing new, but the transparency required by the Affordable Care Act allows everyone to see what they would be paying if they lived somewhere else.
While Garfield County has filed a lawsuit against the state claiming that it is unfairly lumped in with its more expensive neighbors in Vail and Aspen, workers and even small-business owners throughout the entire region are reeling from the shockingly high health-care costs to the point that some are considering moving simply because of health-insurance premiums.
People who live in the mountains have come to expect that everything is more expensive— from groceries to fuel to housing — and that’s just part of the price of living in paradise. But those higher costs obviously are moderate compared with health care.
Perhaps along with the healthinsurance exchanges, the state should set up an “address exchange” throughwhich mountain residents can share a household and mailing address in Denver,
just for the insurance.