Colorado Option is a costly failed experiment | OPINION

Winter is here, and the dualistic beautiful and brutal nature of this season can result in a lot of unexpected trips for medical care. From accidents on icy roads to collisions on crowded slopes, people need to know they can count on their health insurance to cover the care they need. Accessible health care is often an incredibly serious matter — it is not something to experiment with. Yet, that's precisely what the state government-controlled Colorado Option does: it treats Coloradans' access to high-quality health care as a socio-economic laboratory experiment, rather than building on tried-and-true policies.

Democratic legislators hastily pushed through the Colorado Option in 2021 with promises of greater consumer choice and lower premiums. Yet three years later, the scheme has failed to deliver on either promise, of choice or affordability. A new study reveals the Colorado Option has not only failed to meaningfully decrease consumer premiums, but all it has decreased is options for coverage. The data shows the vast majority of Colorado Option plans did not meet the premium reduction targets set by the statute. This means for enrollees seeking bronze and silver plans (those most commonly sought), the non-Colorado Option plans were the most affordable option on the market. One of the key assurances by supporters of the Colorado Option was it would lower premiums, but clearly, that has not happened.

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Even where marginal premium savings were observed, they generally came about simply by concealing the costs into higher deductibles. The lesson, again, is that there is no such thing as "free" healthcare — just sleight-of-hand with the costs. A $5,000 or even $10,000 deductible does not equate to "affordable" and "accessible" for most Coloradans.

It's no wonder less than 1% of the state's population has enrolled in the Colorado Option program. It is increasingly obvious Colorado Option plans are not the best choice and the model doesn't do what it promised. More important, however, is the fact that effects of the Colorado Option's failure are not limited to only those who are enrolled in it; but rather those failures have implications for our state's entire health care ecosystem.

The Colorado Option's inherent structural problems have contributed significantly to driving insurance providers out of the state and leaving Colorado consumers with fewer choices — again, the exact opposite of what policymakers promised it would do. Four insurance providers have left Colorado since the implementation of the system, and as a result the vast majority of counties in the state have seen a reduction in available plans. This is due in large part to the unaffordable mandates and market manipulations intrinsic to the state government-controlled system, creating a worse health care landscape in Colorado.

Bottom line: the program continues to hurt rural communities, small businesses and others looking to provide and access reasonably priced health care.

Moreover, this failure of the Colorado Option comes at a time when the state faces a fiscal crisis with a $635 million budget shortage. Now is the time to exercise some fiscal responsibility — not spend hard-earned taxpayer dollars on expensive, experimental systems that don't work. As my colleagues work with the governor to balance the budget, we need to take a hard, critical look at the costly failure that is the Colorado Option. Public health care option schemes have failed everywhere they've been tried — here in Colorado, up in Washington, and beyond. Rather than continuing to bulldoze forward with a system that has proven to not work, we need to instead build upon what is working in our health care system and focus on reliable, bipartisan health care solutions.

As a retired military officer and citizen-legislator, my mission is focused on getting the right things done in the right way — not playing politics. I have always been willing to work with the other side of the aisle to pass meaningful, common-sense reforms that benefit working Coloradans. I remain willing to work with Gov. Jared Polis and my Democratic counterparts on health care solutions that will make positive changes in regular people's lives. Our people deserve health care solutions with a proven track record of delivering on their promises; the Colorado Option clearly is not one of them.

This winter, as we prepare to enter the new year and a new legislative session, the opportunity presents itself to work toward tangible health care solutions that will help Coloradans. It's time to leave the failed Colorado Option experiment in the dustbin of well-intentioned but fatally flawed ideas, and improve access to quality health care by building upon what actually works.

Anthony Hartsook is the Colorado state representative from House District 44.