Colorado’s uninsured rate — the percentage of people without health care coverage — hit an all-time low this year, but federal policy changes mean it’s unclear whether that success can last.
The uninsured rate dropped in 2023 to 4.6%, down from 6.6% when it was last measured in 2021. The figures come from the every-other-year Colorado Health Access Survey, administered by the Colorado Health Institute, a nonpartisan health policy think tank. The survey polled 10,000 households and is widely seen as the gold standard for tracking changes in insurance coverage in Colorado.
“This was a statistically significant decrease that we found,” CHI director of research and evaluation Jeff Bontrager said Friday when announcing the findings at the institute’s annual Hot Issues in Health conference.
Despite the good news statewide, Colorado’s uninsured rate remained higher in mountain resort communities. The health statistics region that includes Summit, Grand, Eagle, Pitkin and Garfield counties had an estimated uninsured rate of 12%. That’s up from 10% in the 2021 survey.
The increase in coverage statewide was driven by a surge in the number of people covered by Medicaid, the joint state-federal program that most commonly serves people from low-income families. In 2019, just before the COVID pandemic hit, Medicaid covered about 18.7% of people in Colorado. By 2021, that percentage had risen to 24.8%. For 2023, CHI found the percentage is now an even 30% — three out of every 10 people in the state.
But this trend may not last. During the worst months of the pandemic, the federal government instructed states not to drop anyone from Medicaid coverage. This resulted in swelling Medicaid populations across the country. In Colorado, the number of people covered by Medicaid topped 1.7 million.
☀️ READ MORE
As the pandemic eased, the federal government ended this safety net and told states they had to begin doing eligibility redeterminations. Officials in Colorado estimated that as many as 325,000 people may lose Medicaid coverage in a wave of redeterminations that began this spring and will continue into next year. Those folks would have to find new coverage.
Bontrager said the 2023 survey data — gathered between March and August — likely don’t reflect the impacts of this redetermination process. That means it’s unclear whether the record-low uninsured rate is a one-time blip.
“It is unknown at this point how many people will continue to stay covered and how many people will become uninsured in the state,” he said.
The rise in people covered by Medicaid coincided with a decrease in the percentage of people who bought insurance on their own. In 2023, an estimated 4.9% of Coloradans purchased coverage without help from an employer, down from 6.3% in 2021. The share of people who received employer-sponsored coverage held mostly steady, at just under 50%. About 10.5% of people were covered by Medicare.
The Colorado Health Institute expects to release more detailed analyses of its findings in the coming months.