The financial committee of Connect for Health Colorado, the state’s independently run health insurance exchange, will meet Monday to discuss the possibility of handing over some of its operations to the federal government.
State legislators have asked the exchange to develop scenarios that include continuing as a stand-alone operation separate from the state or leasing its technology platform to the federal government, said spokesman Luke Clarke.
“We’re just taking a look at what the options are. We’re a couple of years into this now, and they want to have a conversation that looks at the alternative approaches,” Clarke said. “The situation now is looking at the numbers — what would it cost for us to continue versus what it would cost for us to make this change.”
Last week, Connect for Health Colorado chief executive Kevin Patterson introduced those strategic plans to Club 20, an advocacy group, in Grand Junction. Clarke said those preliminary conversations don’t mean the federal exchange is the preferred option.
The exchange is the marketplace for Coloradans seeking individual and small-group health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act. Colorado chose to create its own exchange while other states chose to use the federal operation.
Some state legislators are concerned about the exchange’s long-term stability as federal grant funding is set to expire, and enrollment numbers came up short last year from their projected plan which was adopted last June.
The exchange during the most recent enrollment period. In June, when the exchange board approved a budget with a $13.3 million deficit and raised its fees, .
The idea of handing some operations to the federal exchange is not unique to Colorado, and Clarke said many other states have sought out similar options. In what the Colorado exchange is considering, the role of the federal exchange would rest primarily on the technology side, mainly in running the online marketplace website.
“There’s a significant difference between what’s on our website versus what they have on the federal site,” Clarke said. “We have decision support tools where people can look on our site to compare plans to see how the various health insurance plans treat them and what the monthly costs would be. I don’t know where the federal health care website is with that.”
Natalie Munio: 303-954-1666, nmunio@denverpost.com or @nataliemunio
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