Colorado House Bill 10-1154: moratoriam on mandated benefits

February 4th, 2010 | by Brian Schwartz |

Update Feb. 7: Bob Mook at the Denver Business Journal reports that this bill is dead:

Small businesses in Colorado won’t get a break this year on their health insurance premiums — or from new mandates that insurance brokers say are contributing to the higher rates.

On Feb. 4, the House State Affairs Committee killed House Bill 1154 in a 6-5 vote.

Read his whole post: “Timeout” Proposal Dies; What Next?Here’s the summary of Colorado House Bill 10-1154 from the Colorado General Assembly page:

Concerning the process for the enactment of mandated health insurance benefits, and, in connection therewith, repealing the commission on mandated health insurance benefits and transferring its functions to the director of research of the legislative council and imposing a one-year moratorium on the enactment of new mandated health insurance benefits.

This would help reduce how much insurance premiums would increase. William Congdon, Amanda Kowalski and Mark Showalter conclude that

Mandated benefits raise the expected price of an individual policy by approximately 0.4 percent per mandate. For family policies the increase is approximately 0.5 percent per mandate. The typical state has about 20 mandates (with a range from 6 to 48) so a reduction from 20 to 10 mandates would imply a 4 percent decrease in price for individual policies, and a 5 percent decrease for family policies.

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  • Brian Schwartz
    Hi Tim.

    I see where you're coming from. I included the Brookings reference to add credibility to the figures, as left-wing politicians typically promote mandated benefits and would down play how much they increase premiums. In a sense I was anticipating the reaction that some have to empirical studies, e.g., "Oh, well the researchers are biased to reach the conclusion they did."
  • Tim
    "Note that Congdon is affiliated with the left-leaning Brookings Institution."

    This statement is unnecessary. Let people make up their own minds about the bill and analysis of the bill. You introduced unneeded bias.
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