Right now, many states are trying to figure out how to go about making their own health insurance exchange. These exchanges are an important part of the Affordable Care Act, and are supposed to be up and running in 2014. Some states are refusing to create an exchange, but Colorado has decided to start working on theirs.
Recently, Governor John Hickenlooper signed a bill called SB 200 into law. This law makes Colorado one of the first states that is going to make their own, voluntary, competitive insurance market. In other words, work will soon begin on creating the “Colorado Health Benefits Exchange”. Once created, Colorado will be in compliance with the Affordable Care Act, which requires all states to have established their own health insurance exchanges by 2014.
The Colorado Health Benefits Exchange will be accessible to individual citizens of Colorado, as well as small businesses that operate in Colorado. It will be designed to make it easy for people to compare different health insurance plans, and find one that is affordable for them. It will give people more control, better quality choices, and more protections when they buy health insurance. It should also save people some money.
This bill did not get passed into law quietly, and without controversy. Republicans in Colorado wanted to attach an amendment to the bill that would have required Colorado to officially opt out of the Affordable Care Act before the health insurance exchange could be started. Ultimately, the amendment was killed, and the bill was passed into law.
Some legislators felt that Colorado should have waited until the lawsuits regarding the Affordable Care Act were resolved. It is worth noting that Republican Attorney General John Suthers has included Colorado into a multi-state lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of the requirement for everyone to buy health insurance in 2014.
It hasn’t been very easy to keep track of which states are doing heath insurance exchanges, which are not, and which are undecided. As far as I have been able to tell, California, Vermont, and now, Colorado, are among the states that are officially going to work on creating their own health insurance exchange. Minnesota has voted to ban the creation of a health insurance exchange in their state. I think New York is working towards it, but has yet to pass any bills about health insurance exchanges into law as of yet.
Image by Robert Cutts on Flickr