Colorado Possibility: Growing Transparency and Driving Down Prices By means of Enhanced Charge Overview

By Christine Monahan, Nadia Stovicek, and Sabrina Corlette*

Colorado is likely one of the first states within the nation to implement a quasi-public medical insurance choice, requiring personal well being insurers to supply “Colorado Possibility” plans that meet heightened necessities to supply residents extra inexpensive, high-quality medical insurance plan selections. Colorado usually has excessive business hospital charges—on common 283% larger than Medicare charges—spurring motion to scale back prices for shoppers. The state legislature enacted this program to drive down medical insurance premium progress within the particular person and small group markets by encouraging insurers to scale back well being care supplier reimbursement charges and undertake different value containment measures.

For 2023, Colorado required insurers to scale back premiums for Colorado Possibility plans by 5 % (relative to premiums in the identical space in 2021 topic to inflation and different changes). For every of the following two years, they need to lower premiums by a further 5 %. Premium will increase thereafter are capped to medical inflation. The regulation additionally requires insurers to satisfy wholesome equity-focused community necessities. In its first yr, six insurers provided 36 Colorado Possibility plans within the particular person market, representing 11% of plans; 11 insurers provided 48 Colorado Possibility plans within the small-group market, or about 10% of accessible plans. Whereas few of those insurers met their targets in the course of the first yr, in addition they didn’t face any penalty for noncompliance.

Starting with plan yr 2024, the Colorado Division of Insurance coverage (DOI) is bringing extra scrutiny to Colorado Possibility premiums and underlying supplier reimbursement charges and might impose decrease reimbursement ranges to attain this system’s premium discount aim. This weblog examines how that course of is unfolding.

Enhanced Charge Overview Below the Colorado Possibility Program

When Colorado policymakers first started growing a public choice, they envisioned the state would set the charges Colorado Possibility plans would pay well being care suppliers, however business teams argued that they may decrease prices for shoppers on their very own. Lawmakers finally compromised: personal insurers and suppliers might nonetheless negotiate charges themselves, however the state would have considerably extra oversight authority.

Particularly, well being insurers should notify the DOI whether or not their Colorado Possibility plans meet premium price discount targets annually. If not, the insurers should clarify why and, if relevant, establish any hospital or different well being care supplier that could be a trigger for his or her failure to satisfy the targets and identify them in a criticism. The DOI additionally might file a criticism towards an insurer that fails to satisfy its targets and usher in any suppliers it determines answerable for that insurers’ failure to conform. The DOI Commissioner might then maintain a public listening to with each the insurers and suppliers at which the insurers can testify about why particular hospitals prevented them from reducing reimbursement charges, thus limiting their capability to decrease premiums.

On the conclusion of the listening to, the Commissioner might set new reimbursement charges that the suppliers should settle for and the insurer should use to recalculate premiums. For hospitals, these Commissioner-set reimbursement charges could also be no decrease than both an annual flooring calculated by the DOI or greater than 20 % decrease than the insurer-negotiated price from the earlier plan yr.

Below a newly enacted regulation, the DOI can also set up uniform limits on insurers’ administrative prices and earnings for Colorado Possibility plans; the brand new caps might be 15 % for administrative prices and a couple of % for earnings for plan yr 2024.

The Preliminary Charge Notifications and Complaints

Regardless of insurer and hospital assurances that they may convey down prices on their very own, just one insurer initially met the premium price discount targets statewide for 2024. Two others notified the DOI that they’d meet the targets for only a handful of their plans, whereas the bulk wouldn’t meet the targets for any plans. Surprisingly, just one insurer, Cigna, named any suppliers as answerable for the persevering with excessive premiums in a criticism. The rest forged aspersions on this system and laid blame for rising charges on elements exterior of their management, together with inflation. (Recognizing that inflation has been larger than anticipated after they first enacted the regulation, lawmakers have revised how one can account for inflation when calculating the premium discount targets.)

After conducting its personal analyses, the DOI filed complaints towards a number of of the state’s greater insurers and the hospitals it discovered had been preserving these insurers’ premium charges above goal. When naming these insurers, the DOI prioritized insurers providing Colorado Possibility plans with the very best anticipated enrollment. When naming hospitals, the DOI recognized hospitals whose reimbursement charges had a fabric impression on premiums and that will generate the best potential premium reductions for the named insurer if the Commissioner had been to organize them to simply accept the relevant annual hospital reimbursement flooring decided by the DOI. (The DOI didn’t account for the regulation’s provision that reimbursement charges couldn’t be decreased by greater than 20 % in comparison with 2023.)

The complaints filed by Cigna and the DOI kickstarted a public listening to course of into the named insurers’ charges and named hospitals’ reimbursement ranges and triggered a flurry of authorized filings from all events.

The Public Listening to Course of

The general public listening to course of didn’t proceed as deliberate, however nonetheless seems to have yielded outcomes. Most notably, earlier than the hearings started, Cigna introduced that it had reached an settlement with the three hospital programs it named to decrease reimbursement charges. One hospital even agreed to charges under the ground the Commissioner might have ordered. Upon verifying the brand new charges, the Commissioner cancelled Cigna’s listening to.

The Commissioner additionally cancelled the opposite hearings after the insurers and hospitals demonstrated that the aims of the listening to—lowering the supplier reimbursement charges—had been achieved. Particularly, the insurers (Rocky Mountain HMO, Kaiser Basis Well being Plan, and HMO Colorado) attested they agreed to supplier reimbursement charges that had been as little as the Commissioner might have ordered had the hearings proceeded. The Commissioner, in flip, vacated the hearings, however ordered that the insurers present documentation to the DOI as a part of the speed overview course of verifying their representations, together with (1) plan yr 2023 and 2024 price data, together with contracts and price sheets and documentation exhibiting the negotiated price as a share of Medicare; and (2) an announcement demonstrating the general impression of the supplier reimbursement reductions on premiums. As a result of it’s unclear when the insurers and hospitals reached their agreements, this data should distinguish between agreements made earlier than and after March 1, 2023, when insurers made their preliminary price notifications. The DOI should use this data to calculate the premium price discount ensuing from suppliers and insurers attaining the utmost allowable reimbursement price reductions.

Whereas the method didn’t happen as initially supposed, DOI nonetheless led a public listening to to permit the general public to testify usually and about particular insurers. Client advocacy teams Colorado Heart for Regulation and Coverage and the Colorado Client Well being Initiative praised the general public listening to course of to maintain insurers accountable. Small enterprise teams testified in help of the Colorado Possibility program and wished it to be extra extensively obtainable and simpler to entry within the state. One particular person testified towards this system.

What Comes Subsequent

The Colorado DOI is constant its overview of Colorado Possibility plan charges, each to make sure the ultimate premiums for 2024 meet all expectations beneath the regulation and to guage the premium impression of the discount within the negotiated reimbursement charges and the general public listening to course of. At a minimal, nonetheless, we all know that the method generated financial savings for shoppers who might be enrolling in Cigna’s Colorado Possibility plan and requested price will increase for Colorado Possibility plans are greater than 30% decrease than the requested price improve for non-Colorado Possibility plans. Moreover, the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers has calculated that the Colorado Possibility program along with the state’s reinsurance program is predicted to scale back common premiums by 22% in 2024, up from 20% when the reinsurance program alone was launched in 2020.

Though generally mentioned for instance of a state public medical insurance choice, the Colorado Possibility program serves for instance of how states can improve their price overview processes to decrease well being care prices and enhance affordability. Keep tuned for extra from CHIR quickly on how further states have and are exploring utilizing enhanced price overview powers to comprise prices.

*Authors’ be aware: This weblog was up to date on the afternoon of Monday, September 11, to appropriate the order of the authors.