The Colorado Division of Insurance has announced that finalized health insurance rates won’t be available until the middle of August – about two weeks after the originally-scheduled August 1 release date. The preliminary rates, carriers and plan designs were announced in June, and it’s likely that the final rates will be in the same basic range. When we first saw the list of carriers that were going to be providing individual health insurance in Colorado starting in October (for 2014 effective dates), we were surprised to see that UnitedHealth Care was only listed as a carrier for small group plans (they have had a strong presence in the individual health insurance market in Colorado for many years, both as Golden Rule and UnitedHealthOne). And we also noticed that Assurant (Time) was not included at all in the list of carriers that had submitted rates and plans to the DOI earlier this year.
We’ve recently found out that Assurant will indeed continue to offer individual health insurance in 2014, outside of the exchange. They submitted rates and plans in May but the submission was incomplete and had to be refiled, which is why they were missing from the data that was released in June. The Assurant details should be included with the finalized rate information that will be released in mid-August.
In addition, UnitedHealth Care will be offering individual health insurance in the Connect for Health Colorado exchange, under the name All Savers Insurance Company. This was included with the June data, but many people might have been unaware that All Savers Insurance is a UnitedHealth Care company.
We wanted to clarify this information in case you’re looking for an individual policy from either of these companies. More info will be forthcoming once we have the finalized rate data, so stay tuned.