Colorado Moving To Curb Health Insurance Costs

Colorado officials say health care reform has given them the power to curb insurance rate hikes.

Those curbs helped the state block a 24 percent increase request by Cigna.

According to the Denver Post Cigna wanted to raise rates for individual health policies in 2013 by 31 percent in several mountain counties in a way the state says isn’t justified.

Colorado changed a law that allowed insurers to raise rates and get permission later, and the federal Affordable Care Act of 2010 now requires a review of hikes of more than 10 percent a year.

Cigna covers about 21,000 people in Colorado, and says it needed the increase because hospital costs in Pitkin, Routt, Eagle and Garfield counties are 28 percent higher than the rest of rural Colorado