November 20, 2013 11:48 AM UTC

Coloradans Continue to #GetCovered Thanks to Obamacare

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• by: ProtectCareCo

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Here’s what the Quinnipiac poll didn’t get: Colorado’s marketplace, as has been demonstrated on Channel 4 and other news outlets as well as the countless success stories, is working well and enrollments are surging. The enrollment rate has actually doubled – as many people enrolled in the first two weeks of November as did in October. 

For example, Nurse Rebecca Haug of Del Norte CO, who enrolled and found out with subsidies she will pay nothing for her monthly premium. Or Janice Bakker of Denver, a breast cancer survivor who got a Kaiser bronze plan on the exchange for about $300 less than the high-risk pool she was in with good coverage.

As NBC points out, “What was true two or three weeks ago [about health care] might not be true anymore.” And that certainly applies to Colorado.

The effort to set up Colorado’s marketplace, connectforhealthco.com, was bipartisan. Rep. Amy Stephens (R-Monument, now a Republican primary challenger against Udall) and former Sen. Betty Boyd sponsored the bill that produced Connect for Health Colorado. Rep. Stephens and 12 other House Republicans, including then-Speaker Frank McNulty, joined House Democrats in support of the bill. The exchange also has strong business support.

And there’s a glimmer of hope that Congressional Republicans might be coming around to think the Affordable Care Act is good policy.  Reps. Cory Gardner and Mike Coffman may rail against the Affordable Care Act on television, but their offices are helpfully referring constituents to connectforhealthco.com so they can get health insurance.

Issue questions are notoriously easy to misinterpret, and depending on how the question is phrased, you could be picking up people who are dissatisfied with the law from the left or preferring to improve it instead of repeal it. An October Kaiser poll shows a higher share would like to see Congress expand the law or keep it as is (47 percent) rather than repeal it (37 percent). A November United Technologies/National Journal Congressional Connection survey found fewer than two in five Americans say it should be repealed, virtually unchanged since last summer.

So the question remains for those opposing Obamacare: What’s your alternative? Going back to the old days when kids with asthma could be denied insurance for a pre-existing condition?  When women could be charged more for insurance simply for being female? When mental health care wasn’t included? When breast cancer survivors were left to fend for themselves? 

They don’t have an answer for these questions – because every day these questions are being answered by Coloradans whose lives are improving thanks to the Affordable Care Act.