Colorado Insurance Signups Lag Some Other States
DENVER (AP) - Colorado's signups for private health insurance remain well below worst-case projections, federal data released Wednesday confirm.
The Department of Health and Human Services released enrollment statistics through Nov. 30. Colorado's state-run exchange, Connect For Health Colorado, had released its own figures, but the numbers released Wednesday allow comparisons with those of other state-based exchanges.
Some 9,980 people had signed up in Colorado through Nov. 30. Five other states that also are running their own exchanges - California, Connecticut, Kentucky, New York and Washington - each signed up more people for private insurance than Colorado. Two of those states have fewer people than Colorado: Connecticut, which signed up 11,631 people; and Kentucky, with 13,145.
Wednesday's figures show 35,214 applications representing 69,691 people were completed through the Colorado exchange.
Enrollment figures through the exchange are short of expectations. Officials' high-end projection for how many people would enroll in an insurance plan through December was more than 61,000. The low-end projection for enrollments through December is 22,215.
Federal grants are supporting the Colorado exchange now, but the system is supposed to be self-sustaining by 2016. However, that's contingent in part by healthy enrollment figures.
The system is to pay for itself with per-member charges on the private insurance companies offering policies. It needs 136,300 enrollees in 2014 to raise $6.5 million of its $51.4 million in expenses.
LINK: Connect For Health Colorado
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