EDITORIAL: Blame politicians for soaring insurance rates

Predictably, Colorado’s health insurance market is crumbling under years of mandates imposed on insurers — despite a governor who earnestly promised to lower health care costs.

The Colorado Division of Insurance recently announced that small group insurance rates will rise by an average of 13.6% in 2026, with Western Slope residents facing hikes as high as 17.2%. The individual market will get a 28% average increase statewide, with rural premiums jumping 38%. Given that people struggle to afford insurance, this won’t end well.

The soaring rates, as detailed in a recent report from the Division of Insurance, are not mere market fluctuations. They are mostly the result of Colorado’s heavy-handed regulatory zeal, which strangles competition and drives up costs without regard for political messaging.

Three years ago, The Gazette warned that “Colorado’s regulatory maze suffocates insurance providers, forcing them to raise premiums or exit the market entirely.”

Anthem HMO’s departure from Colorado, effective Jan. 1, 2026, marks the fifth insurer to flee since 2022.

Insurance companies are bound by economic realities as unyielding as gravity. When Colorado imposes mandates — including expansive coverage requirements and costly compliance rules — insurers pass the costs to consumers with higher premiums and other “cost-sharing” measures. When consumers can’t afford these costs, insurers abandon them.

With five providers gone missing in three years, Colorado has lost the downward pricing pressure of robust competition.

The 172,000 Coloradans in the small group market and 200,000 in the individual market will pay for this regulatory revelry, a political game in which optics outweigh outcomes. Politicians mandate what consumers want to hear, damned be the consequences. When they blame this crisis on this year’s federal tax cuts, know it has been building for years.

Gov. Jared Polis established the Office of Saving People Money on Health Care in 2019 to do what the name suggests. Since its inception, premiums have only climbed, with individual market rates now rising at a pace that outstrips inflation and wages. The office’s initiatives, layered with bureaucratic oversight, ignore fundamental economic realities.

The state cannot regulate affordability, and Polis knows it. The problem is not that our governor lacks knowledge of economic principles, it is his failure to stand for them. Consider the warning he issued while signing an insurance mandate forcing insurers to cover infertility treatments.

“Additional mandates … can have the unintended consequence of making coverage less accessible to those who need it most,” Polis wrote while signing House Bill 1158 on April 1, 2020.

His signing letter said, “I will be disinclined to sign future legislation creating new insurance mandates.” Since that day, he has signed:

• House Bill 1276, mandating coverage of physical therapy, occupational therapy, chiropractic care and acupuncture.

• Senate Bill 215, funding “affordability programs” with fees on insurers and hospitals to pay for the Health Insurance Affordability Enterprise and to fund the state’s reinsurance program.

• House Bill 1284, requiring insurers to cover specified out-of-network services at in-network rates.

• House Bill 1232, requiring insurers to offer standardized plans with specific coverage requirements to establish the Colorado Standardized Health Benefit Plan, best known as the Colorado Option.

• Senate Bill 175, making Colorado the first state to require that insurance companies cover the costs of “gender-affirming care.”

Colorado Insurance Commissioner Michael Conway wants insurance to cover all immigrants here illegally at an estimated cost of an additional $13,000 annually to the hardest-hit Colorado households.

Colorado’s feckless and naive legislative leftists and health care bureaucrats might think they can mandate outcomes, but our Gov. Polis knows better. His alter ego — the part that caves to party pressure — undermined his heartfelt goal to lower the costs of care. Today, the costs speak for themselves.

The Gazette Editorial Board

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