It抖阴ap happening exactly as predicted — Colorado health insurers are hiking up Affordable Care Act (ACA) premiums on the state鈥檚 marketplace by 11% next year.
Coloradans can鈥檛 afford this new, crushing cost on top of last year鈥檚 28% premium increase resulting from Donald Trump and congressional Republicans鈥� for health care coverage.
Just over a year ago, Republicans under Trump cut $1 trillion from Medicaid in order to give tax breaks to billionaires. This will kick 15 million Americans off their health insurance, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Immediately after the legislation was signed, states began bracing for the substantial pullback of federal support, rural hospital closures, and implementation of burdensome paperwork requirements intended to drive down enrollment.
Months later, congressional Republicans allowed the ACA premium support to expire, which helped hardworking individuals and families afford their health insurance. This lapse will lead to 5 million more people going without coverage.
Democrats in Congress, prominent health care experts and advocacy organizations, hospitals across the nation, and numerous state officials, including our state鈥檚 insurance commissioner, warned of the real human toll the cuts would take.
As the top Democrat on the powerful Health Subcommittee, I knew these cuts would be devastating for vulnerable Americans across the country. That is why I led the fight, alongside my colleagues in committee and on the House floor, to block Trump and his congressional allies from ripping coverage away from the seniors, veterans, low-income wage earners, chronically ill patients, and more who rely on Medicaid.
Now, the nightmare we tried to prevent is reality. Millions of Americans are struggling to afford their care or are opting to cancel their coverage altogether, including large numbers of Coloradans. As of July 1, health plan cancellations in Colorado are a staggering 29% higher than they were at this time last year, and insurance premiums will cost Coloradans thousands more.
Even though Colorado created a state-funded premium assistance program in an effort to blunt the harsh federal cuts and support vulnerable Coloradans鈥� access to care, it抖阴ap not enough to stem the impact. While that program held Colorado to a 7% decrease in ACA enrollments over last year, keeping roughly 28,000 Coloradans insured, our neighbor Oklahoma experienced a staggering 32% decrease in enrollment this year.
And we haven鈥檛 even reached rock bottom. For sheer political reasons, many of the Medicaid cuts in last year鈥檚 Big Bad Bill were intentionally left partially implemented until after the upcoming midterm election. As CBO predicted, the worst is yet to come.
Congress must聽act.
First, we have to stop the bleeding and stabilize the health care markets with a sufficiently long extension of the ACA premium support that so many Americans have relied on to afford their coverage. However, stabilizing a fragmented, profit-driven market is only a temporary patch. To truly secure the future of American health care, we must take a hard, uncompromising look at the underlying issues that drive up our health care costs, sparing no one in the industry.
Only by addressing the health care system as a whole and not merely individual parts — such as payers, providers, product manufacturers, and others 鈥� can we move toward guaranteeing quality, comprehensive care for all.
U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette has represented Congressional District 1 since taking office in 1997.
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