The number of Coloradans without health insurance hit an all-time low this year, according to the 2023 Colorado Health Access Survey. The uninsured rate dropped in 2023 to 4.6%, down from 6.6% in 2021, the last time it was measured.
Reporter Michael Booth with The Colorado Sun joined KUNC host Nikole Robinson Carroll to discuss how some changes to federal policies are making the future of health insurance coverage unclear. Booth emphasized that right now, though, uninsured rates have reached historic lows in much of the state.
“Nationally, the peak of uninsured rates before the Affordable Care Act really kicked in was as high as 16 percent,” Booth told KUNC. “And that was reflected in Colorado - it might not have been quite that high, but it was very high in Colorado. So the change from 16% of the population having no health insurance access whatsoever down to 4.6% is a big change.”
Booth said this change was driven by an increase in insured rates from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which took effect in 2010.
“A major part of that (the ACA) was the expansion of Medicaid to a much larger portion of the population,” Booth said. “So that's a state and federal joint program paid for jointly by those two government entities.”
The number of people on Medicaid grew from less than 19% of the state’s population before the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to 30% today. Another 10% get their health insurance through Medicare, the federal program for people over 65.
While statewide coverage numbers look good overall, there were some outliers.
“Mountain counties are still having trouble getting people signed up for health insurance at comparable rates,” Booth said. “Health insurers don't necessarily want to go up there, because with smaller populations, it's harder for them to predict what their costs are going to be—and things cost more when they do give services.”
Uninsured rates are at 12% in those mountain towns, an increase since 2021.
Coloradans are also facing impending rollbacks of pandemic-era coverage offerings, which could have consequences for many.
“They (the federal government) wanted to get as many people covered by health insurance during COVID as possible to make sure that they would have access during the pandemic, and they wouldn't have to worry about whether they were losing their jobs,” Booth said. “But now those policies are coming to an end, and the states are having to go through the population that was added to Medicaid and see if they still qualify. And they're planning to lose more than 300,000 people from the ranks of Medicaid as a result of those reviews over the next year or so.”
Booth recommends that Coloradans on Medicaid prepare for the changes by making sure their addresses and contact information are up to date. That way, local and state governments can more easily contact them to check qualifications and help them navigate open enrollment.
