{"id":797888,"date":"2019-07-23T10:51:02","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T16:51:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=369068"},"modified":"2019-07-23T10:51:02","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T16:51:02","slug":"letter-to-the-editor-reduction-in-health-insurance-premiums-is-not-nearly-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/letter-to-the-editor-reduction-in-health-insurance-premiums-is-not-nearly-enough\/","title":{"rendered":"Letter to the editor: Reduction in health insurance premiums is not nearly enough"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When \u201cObamacare\u201d was crammed down our throats, we all lost the \u201cpolicy we could keep\u201d and saw insurance premiums go up 600% in Summit County.&nbsp;My Humana full coverage policy was $325 a month in 2009, and that was for a $500 deductible.&nbsp;If I was foolish enough to pay for the worst coverage under the Affordable Care Act, my premiums would be $1,900 a month for a single male with a $6,500 deductible.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Now, the Democrats are lauding their \u201ctemporary\u201d premium reduction of 29%.&nbsp;(\u201c<a href=\"mailto:https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/summit-county-individual-buyers-to-see-29-decrease-in-health-insurance-premiums-next-year\/\">Summit County individual buyers to see 29% decrease in health insurance premiums next year<\/a>\u201d published July 17 in the Summit Daily News.)<\/p>\n<p>The math: A 29% reduction on my $1,900 monthly premium equals $1,349 a month \u2014 still a quadrupling of premiums before the ACA raised the cost of out of reach for pretty much everyone above the poverty level living on the Western Slope.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m sure those who have no choice but to pay upward of $27,000 per year to insure their family are happy to see this relief, but the bottom line is that the ACA is still too expensive for most families to afford, so they will continue to remain uninsured. It\u2019s shameful that so many hard-working Coloradans have lost their ability to afford health insurance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The affordable health care promised to Americans is still unaffordable.&nbsp;Instead of celebrating screwing people less, it\u2019s time to let market forces return health insurance premiums to truly affordable levels.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/opinion\/letter-to-the-editor-reduction-in-health-insurance-premiums-is-not-nearly-enough\/?\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When \u201cObamacare\u201d was crammed down our throats, we all lost the \u201cpolicy we could keep\u201d and saw insurance premiums go up 600% in Summit County.&nbsp;My Humana full coverage policy was $325 a month in 2009, and that was for a $500 deductible.&nbsp;If I was foolish enough to pay for the worst coverage under the Affordable [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-797888","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-18 07:43:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797888"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797888\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}