Now that the 2026 campaign races are on for real, candidates for the state legislature, statewide offices and congress will all be talking the talk about lowering the cost of living.
Voters should insist they move beyond slogans and detail how they would reduce the costs that state government can actually influence.
Yeah, groceries are stupid expensive. Gas prices are painful. Housing remains a near-liability for too many people. But the inability for families to keep up with all that is mostly driven by national forces that Colorado lawmakers can’t control.
There are, however, three major household expenses that are linked to state government: car insurance, homeowner insurance and car registration fees. Those costs are consuming larger and larger portions of family budgets, yet they receive only passing mention during political campaigns.
Working families, retirees, young professionals and workers alike are finding that simply maintaining a middle-class lifestyle has become a fading American dream.
Insurance costs are now competing with mortgages and car payments for huge chunks of workers’ paychecks.
Colorado homeowners pay some of the highest insurance premiums in the nation. According to recent reporting in the Colorado Sun and Denver Post, average premiums now exceed $4,000 a year and have risen dramatically over the past several years.
Colorado insurance and other state officials acknowledged that premium affordability has become a serious problem and that traditional market forces alone, like competition, are unlikely to solve it.
Meanwhile, state data shows insurers generally target so-called loss ratios between 65% and 75%, meaning roughly one-quarter to one-third of your insurance premium dollars go toward administrative expenses, company overhead and profit, not paying for claims of fellow insurance clients who file for them.
There’s no disputing that Insurance companies certainly face legitimate challenges. Colorado’s hailstorms, wildfires and rising construction costs make the state a difficult place to insure property. Companies deserve an opportunity to earn reasonable profits while maintaining adequate reserves for catastrophic losses.
But “reasonable” is the operative word, and reasonable needs to be operative for customers, too,
If lawmakers and the insurance industry cannot develop meaningful ways to reduce homeowner insurance premiums, Colorado should seriously examine creating a public insurance option. A state-sponsored insurer operating without shareholder profit expectations or excessive corporate bureaucracy could introduce genuine competition into the marketplace while providing consumers with a desperately needed choice.
The same candidate debate should focus on spiraling car insurance rates.
Colorado drivers pay some of the nation’s highest premiums despite repeated promises that relief is on the way. Gov. Jared Polis recently unveiled an administrative strategy aimed at reducing rates by lowering vehicle thefts, preventing hail damage and addressing uninsured motorists. Those efforts may help over time, but drivers have heard promises before while watching premiums climb.
Candidates should explain what additional steps they would support if rates don’t go down.
Hope is a lousy state government policy.
Vehicle registration is another growing burden that deserves far more scrutiny and is absolutely under the control of state lawmakers and execs.
Many Coloradans are shocked when they register a new or newer vehicle and discover that license plate costs can reach into the thousands of dollars. Much of that expense stems from the state’s Specific Ownership Tax, which is calculated using the manufacturer’s suggested retail “dream” price when the car was still on the lot, rather than what the vehicle sold for or is worth today.
That approach ignores real-world depreciation. Someone who purchases a used vehicle that originally carried a $50,000 sticker price can still pay taxes reflecting that original value rather than the bargain purchase price. Meanwhile, owners of much older vehicles contribute relatively little despite using the same roads.
State residents just don’t have the cash they once did, and candidates looking for a state position need to prove to voters they get it. Too many people who live here are at a financial breaking point, and the last thing the state needs is fewer people having car and house insurance.
Like taxes, these are mandatory costs imposed by laws or regulations requiring everyone to pay to be able to drive or own a home.
And in Colorado, those aren’t luxury items.
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If we have learned anything over the years, it is that the private sector of the economy will always do a better and more efficient job than a government run program. Government run programs always lead to more inefficiency, corruption and fraud, because administrators are dealing with someone else’s money; not their own.
Insurance costs in Colorado are a result of costs and risk profiles here. These are largely fixed. The only way these fixed costs can be reduced is to restrict insurance providers, which will cause some to leave Colorado, or for the government to subsidize costs, which will require tax increases. We will pay one way or another.