The Cost of Doing Nothing

Average Coloradans already know how expensive health insurance can be. When premiums go up 82% in six years(1), how can we not notice? And if you heard our radio ad, you know that right now your family is paying $934 more per year to cover the uninsured. (You can hear the radio ad here.) What most people don't realize is that those increased costs are directly related to the systemic problems in our health care system.

There's a vicious cycle that's spinning out of control; a family will be unable to afford high premiums, so they'll go without insurance. The uninsured family won't get the preventative care they need, so their health problems will be more expensive. When they do get care, because they don't have insurance they'll only be able to pay an average of 35% of their health care costs ⁽²⁾. The rest of the costs will be passed on from health care providers to insurance companies, and finally those costs will be passed along to consumers through higher premiums.

So the cost of doing nothing is going up every day. And without meaningful health care reform, insured Colorado families will pay an extra $1,570 a year by 2010.⁽³⁾

The Partnership for a Healthy Colorado is a group of diverse business, labor and health care interests that have come together seeking a common goal: health care reform. Working together, we can spread the word about how urgent the situation is...we need to do something about health care, and we need to do it now.