9NEWS’ Brandon Rittiman reports on the signing last Friday of a bill to comprehensively audit Connect For Health Colorado, the state’s “Obamacare” health insurance marketplace responsible for significantly reducing the rate of uninsured in Colorado:
Gov. John Hickenlooper on Friday signed into law a bill ordering a functional audit of Connect for Health Colorado, the state’s official health insurance exchange.
SB 19 authorizes the state auditor to investigate the performance of the “operation, contract management, project management, and performance of the shared eligibility system and any other related or corresponding state systems in order to ensure a complete and thorough audit of the operation of the exchange.”
Confusion over systems that are shared between the state and the quasi-governmental exchange ran rampant as people fell into glitches that botched subsidies and canceled automatic renewals of health plans.
Although Connect For Health Colorado has been a success story overall, signing up tens of thousands of Coloradans for new health coverage and helping reduce the rate of uninsured in Colorado from 17% to only 11%, some legitimate issues have cropped up regarding glitches in the signup system that interrupted coverage for a small percentage of policyholders. There’s a continuous need to sort out legitimate issues with anything related to the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, from conservative hysterics and misinformation, but investigations from 9NEWS’ Rittiman and a few others have uncovered real problems that require attention–maybe not from Republicans who want to use any pretext to destroy the system altogether, but definitely from Democrats who want to make the marketplace work.
Senate Republicans introduced the audit bill and were upset when Democrats in the Colorado House of Representatives killed a companion bill which would have also given lawmakers power over bonuses paid to executives with the exchange.
Some Republicans tried to go a step beyond that and kill the exchange altogether.
Giving lawmakers and excuse to grandstand on an annual basis over bonuses for exchange employees serves no functional purpose: only a partisan political one. The difference between essentially trolling the overall highly successful health insurance marketplace every year, compared to legislation to constructively identify and solve legitimate problems that have arisen–which Democrats supported along with Republicans and Gov. John Hickenlooper signed into law Friday–should be obvious.
If it’s not, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your motives.
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We know what the GOP’s motives are. They are nothing without their grandstands…
If an audit is so great, why did Democrats fight it tooth and nail?
Modster: This might be a clue to answering your question:
Which is extremely ironic because setting up the exchange in the first place was a rare instance of CO GOP bipartisanship. The Repubs controlled the House and then-Majority Leader Amy Stephens sponsored the exchange legislation.
I guess that was then, this is now………
Because Republicans do not favor a solution for Obamacare problems, only repeal repeal REPEAL. You are not honest with your criticism and you are not productive partners in reform. Until that changes, no one who supports health care reform can trust upper motives.
Does that help, Moderanus?
Is passing both chambers and signed by the Governor the new Republican definition of “tooth and nail?”
There you are modster! Mommy let you out of the basement for spring break? AC must still be on a bender.
I notice the trolls are a lot less frequent around here now that Ryan Call is gone. Coincidence?
You mean they were Call’s shills and did not belong to the state party? I’m sure House has a couple of drones to send in here. There’s always Ted Harvey.
They’ll comment more frequently as we get closer to elections.
If you really miss AC, talk some smack about Ken Buck.