Obamacare in Colorado is getting down to the details, in dollars and cents.
Colorado's State Capitol by Jesse Varner via Flickr
One of the 16 states that is setting up its own online insurance marketplace, Colorado聽on Monday named to form its “assistance network” to help residents sign up for health coverage on the exchange. But just 11 organizations are getting all the money they applied for, and it’s unclear how many of the 58 will accept the grants they’ve been offered. That may mean gaps in reaching all corners of the state, or specifically targeted populations, such as refugees, rural Latinos, or the disabled.
A total of 74 groups applied in April for assistance network grants to do the work, they ranged from and to and the , “the voice of trucking in Colorado.”
Their collective ask? More than $57 million. Money available? Seventeen million, mostly from expected but yet-to-be-awarded federal and local health foundation grants.
“That鈥檚 meant some very difficult decisions needed to be made getting us into our budget range,” said Assistance Network Manager Adela Flores-Brennan.
“Some may say, ‘We can鈥檛 do this,'” said exchange CEO Patty Fontneau. “Realize we had to cut 70 percent of the requests, when you look at the amount of money that was requested.”
The exchange is offering聽would-be assistance groups grants ranging from as much as聽$816,000 for to nothing at all for and a that aren’t asking for funding but will be part of the assistance network.
The exchange board is working with organizations聽about the scope of work and their budgets. The final list of those participating聽“will be finalized in coming聽weeks.”
Until then, it鈥檚 unknown how many actual “assisters” each will employ, and where exactly they will, and won鈥檛, be distributed across the state.
Most of Colorado鈥檚 5.2 million people live in an urban corridor along Interstate 25. Most of the assistance network funding is aimed at that corridor. The , and outside it can be very sparsely populated and challenging to travel across due to topography and .
Colorado鈥檚 goal is to set up assistance “hubs” in six regional locations that will in dozens more.
Boulder County is being offered $350,000 to operate the most populous hub in eight counties including and surrounding Denver, home to more than 3.5 million people.
In contrast,聽 in the southwestern part of Colorado is being offered $168,000 to operate in 11 of the state鈥檚 least populous counties, with a total of only 281,000 people. Over half live in Pueblo county alone, and just 710 in mountainous .
Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that no organization that applied for funding got all the money it asked for. In fact, 11 organizations did. There are also six, not five, regional hubs and Boulder County is operating the most populous one.
