Posted on 05/15/2015 12:10:18 PM PDT by george76
Despite fury from lawmakers the day before, Colorado’s health exchange board voted on Thursday to collect millions of additional dollars from all Colorado health insurance customers, even those who have nothing to do with the exchange.
On top of that “broad market assessment,” the board also voted to more than double the user fees levied on people who buy insurance through Colorado’s exchange. ..
The higher broad market fee is projected to allow Connect for Health Colorado to scoop up about about $20 million in 2016. It has been set at $1.25 per member per month on all health insurance customers this year and will rise to $1.80 per member per month next year. Health insurance companies repeatedly have said they pass the fee straight to customers.
The other fee — which is a charged to people who buy health insurance plans through the exchange — is projected to bring in $10 million in 2016, $25 million in 2017 and $28 million the following year.
But those financial projections are based on aggressive enrollment targets that exchange managers may have trouble meeting.
Thus, even with the cash infusion, Colorado’s health exchange may not survive.
Once projected to operate for about $26 million a year, the outgoing interim CEO Gary Drews now expects the exchange to cost at least $54 million a year to run. The exchange has been hemorrhaging cash
...
Some other state-based exchanges are finding the costs of running their exchanges far too high and they are now considering folding into the federal health exchange. But, a decision from the U.S. Supreme Court that is due in late June could undermine the federal exchange if the justices rule that the it cannot hand out tax subsidies to make health insurance cheaper.
(Excerpt) Read more at healthnewscolorado.org ...
Here's hoping! I will not buy insurance at the point of a gun. Death to 0bamaCare!
SCOTUS ruled it a tax; some random board in Colorado can raise taxes unilaterally? They run out of pitchforks there or something?
None of these ‘exchanges’ will ever work. The math is not there to support it. They are doomed to fail, without fail..............
The EPA and other rogue agencies also have been writing laws in violation of the US Constitution.
Silence from Congress who has abdicate their responsibilities.
Never had jack to do with health care, but all about of sucking you dry. It is what criminals do. So where’s the GOP control Congress saviors now?
They are not doomed to failure. They have plenty of headroom to operate; the problem is, like any government, they do not restrict themselves to operating within their means.
Hawaii was only the first of many to fail.
Hoist with their own petard....(to be harmed or disadvantaged by an action of one’s own which was meant to harm someone else)
Nope!
Those “fees” are a TAX and violate TABOR!
“Despite fury from lawmakers the day before, Colorado’s health exchange board voted on Thursday to collect millions of additional dollars from all Colorado health insurance customers, even those who have nothing to do with the exchange.”
Awwww, aren’t the lawmakers cute? They think they have a say in the matter.
Colorado Ping ( Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from the list.)
So, we read many, many articles every single day about gubmint overreach. What I want to know is, what are we going to DO about it?
Right
Too many flunkies doing too little work
The fees are a discriminatory tax
Government devours. It’s a monster and the people turn to it for salvation. Why?
You can’t cheat the market. Eventually it will eat you up.
“You can’t cheat the market. Eventually it will eat you up”
It would be more accurate to say you can’t avoid the market you can just hide and unjustly redistribute your costs. This is what the Government does thou taxes and force.
They are raising ‘Taxes’ as the corrupt Federal employees have define them, in raising the user fees and the company membership fees(which just indirectly come from the same user).
The fact that people are required to use their service in anyway means they are forced to pay what ever direct or indirect costs you should burden them with.
What is really amazing about this story is the mirrorical of Government/monopoly mismanagement of even the most basic industries. I guess there is a good reason the Soviets couldn’t keep their stores stocked and working.
Such fees are taxes. Why aren’t the people of Colorado asking why some random self serving board is raising taxes to give themselves more money? Where is the oversight? Why do the people have no say in the matter, or able to express their desire to change management through the ballot box?
Is it like this throughout Colorado? Does their DMV simply make the fees for driver’s licenses and ID cards as they desire and raise them when ‘funding shortfalls’ occur?
I’ve honestly never heard of this type of thing happening before in a state government, where a body is so autonomous that they can raise fees as they desire to match their own self created budget. Even the post office requires Congressional permission to raise fees and has congressional oversight of their budget.
“Such fees are taxes.”
Di-spite whatever our Corrupt Federal employees say and perhaps even dilute themselves into believing to support their ideological ends. Theses Fees that the people of Colorado are forced to pay are not strictly speaking taxes as they are not imposed by an elected and constitutionally authorized legislative body.
” Why aren’t the people of Colorado asking why some random self serving board is raising taxes to give themselves more money? Where is the oversight? Why do the people have no say in the matter, or able to express their desire to change management through the ballot box?”
Perhaps because the people of Colorado have not yet been asserted with the new fees or recognized those fees for their inherent potential to force from them all their money without recourse. As for the unaccountably you can thank the 5 Federal injustice in black robes sitting in Washington for robing the people of their basic right to control their own wallet. They even had the gull to call the mandate a tax, when the Constitution says Taxes must be started by the elected house of Representatives.
But of course nothing of the constitution matters to the Federal employees in black robes anymore, only their own ideological and ever changing and more twisted concept of ‘right and wrong’ has replace the law as the supreme authority in their court room, and over the people they now govern with edicts.
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