Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Lack of health insurance is a problem for many Americans, but for thousands every year it can lead to an avoidable and premature death.

For this and other reasons, the new health care law, the Affordable Care Act, puts new reforms in place to reduce the number of uninsured Americans and improve their access to care.

This bill represents a significant opportunity loss for Colorado. Should legislation for an interstate compact pass in the Colorado General Assembly, and then be approved by both houses of Congress, the state would no longer receive the benefits resulting from the national health care reform law. The passage of House Bill 1273 would do nothing tangible to reduce the number of uninsured or underinsured in Colorado, improve health care outcomes, better manage premium or health care costs, implement insurance market reforms or provide other potential benefits of the national law.

In our first Straight Talk email, we addressed the minimal impact of federal health care reforms on increasing insurance premiums in Colorado (representing under 5% of rate increases).

But what does the federal law do – in concert with a recent state law – to help rein in those increases? One of several tools provided by the new law is "rate review."

What do new federal health care reforms and existing state law do to help rein in health insurance premium increases?

One tool is the use of "rate review." Prior to 2008, Colorado was a "file and use" state. File and use required insurance companies to file rates and rating data with the Divivison of Insurance; rates could be implemented before they were reviewed, but if they were determined to be unjustified, corrective action could be imposed.