Mountain resorts pay up for health coverage: seasonal jobs, active lifestyles among the factors cited for disparities.

AuthorBest, Allen
PositionHEALTH REPORT

COLORADO'S MOUNTAIN RESORTS made the news last winter for reasons unrelated to snowfall; instead, Kaiser Health News reported that a four-county region--from Breckenridge to Vail, and from Aspen to Glenwood Springs--had the highest health-insurance costs in the country.

It wasn't a shock. Aspen and Vail have some of the highest real estate prices in the world. Why would insurance be different?

Yet the story that emerges is a microcosm of our difficulty with health care. The Affordable Health Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) didn't cause the problem, nor does it solve what is essentially the struggle of middle-income workers.

The heartburn story about high-priced insurance emerged because of a redrawing of boundaries. Before, high-priced resort communities had been pooled with other counties of the Western Slope. The re-design smoothed out the big bump of insurance in the resort areas.

COST CONSIDERATIONS

Why does health care cost so much in these locates? Land costs are high due to relative scarcity. Competition is limited. Business is uneven. December is crazy and May is lazy. In Vail, for example, 61 percent of sales tax collections came during 33 percent of the year, the four key months of ski season. In a sense, the local Vail Valley Medical Center was built for Easter Sunday--except, in fact, it's Christmas week. All the hospitals seek to offer a robust range of services, despite uneven demand. Finally, people who live in mountain communities tend to be a different breed. They see doctors more frequently when in good health. Active lifestyles also result in more visits to high-priced emergency rooms.

Triggered by ACA requirements, Colorado insurance commissioner Marguerite Salazar adjusted boundaries of regions used to set insurance costs, culling four counties from the 20 counties of the Western Slope. In February, Kaiser Health News proclaimed the resort region highest in the nation. A 40-year-old person purchasing the lowest-priced, midlevel "silver plan" could expect to pay $483 per month for insurance. Incongruously, the No. 2 spot was a region in a not-so-affluent part of Georgia at $461 per month, followed by rural Nevada at $456 per month.

Garfield County was outraged to be grouped with the resorts. Although many residents from Carbondale, Rifle and New Castle work in the resorts, it is more of a bedroom community, and largely driven by oil-and-gas development. County commissioners threated a federal lawsuit.

Whereas meetings called...

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