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Obamacare

State is right to market the coming health-insurance exchange energetically

That Colorado is heavily promoting the state’s new health-insurance exchange makes perfect sense. The whole point to the exchange, part of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is to help the uninsured get health insurance. And for that to happen, people need to know what to do and how. That means marketing.

But they also need to know they have to get insurance by Jan. 1 or face a fine. That might be where the state’s effort could be improved.

Data put together by The Associated Press show Colorado is spending $21 million marketing its exchange, called Connect For Health Colorado. The money comes from federal grants and works out to about $4 per person statewide.

More than $1 million went to television ads early this summer. But the larger thrust is through person-to-person contacts to explain to people how the system works. Toward that end, Connect For Health Colorado gave $17 million to 58 various groups across the state to help the uninsured get insurance.

Connect For Health Colorado does not itself sell insurance. It bills itself as a “health insurance marketplace,” where, beginning in October, “you will be able to shop, compare, pick and purchase the health plan that is right for you. All on one site, all in one visit.” The October opening is meant to allow the uninsured time to get insurance before the Jan. 1 deadline, at which point, they will be legally required to have it or pay a fine.

Colorado has been a leader in enacting health-care reform. It was one of the first states to start putting together its insurance exchange and its spending on promoting it is the eighth highest among all the states.

That is important. Colorado has 700,000 uninsured residents and that matters to all of us. People who lack insurance are often young, but they still can get sick or be injured. And when they do they are most likely treated in an emergency room, which is some of the most costly care available. Then if they cannot pay, the rest of us do through higher overall health-care costs.

The uninsured also tend to put off care they cannot afford. Left untreated, however, conditions can worsen until much more serious – and expensive – treatment is required. And we are back to the emergency room and everyone’s costs going up.

It is also a simple fact that the more people that are in any insurance pool the lower the cost of the insurance. That is particularly true about including groups, such as the young, that are generally healthy.

Obamacare is politically and ideologically controversial. The underlying math, however, is well understood. That is why the individual mandate was first proposed back in the ’90s by conservatives eager to reform health care but opposed to then-President Clinton’s idea of mandating employer-provided coverage.

Aggressively marketing Connect For Health Colorado is also key to the timing of Obamacare. It would do nobody good to have the Jan. 1 deadline roll around with hundreds of thousands of people both uninsured and unaware of the requirement to have insurance and the associated fine.

One complaint about the state’s marketing rings true. A Republican appointee to the exchange board, a physician named Michael Fallon, objected to the cute and quiet style of some of the ads.

“We’re going with a, ‘Gosh we’d love your business, come shop with us’ approach,” he said. “They’re not saying, ‘Oh, by the way, you have to shop with us, if you don’t you’ll pay a fine and we’re the only place you can buy subsidized insurance.’”

And perhaps they should.



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