High risk, high need force insurance pool to seek $15M

Colorado's troubled high-risk health-insurance pool has asked the federal government for nearly $15 million more than planned after running up early claims that are twice the national average.

High-risk, uninsurable patients were the heart of emotional pleas for national health-care reform in 2010, and Colorado got $90 million of a $5 billion federal pool to help them.

The allocation was meant to last until 2014, when insurers have to cover everyone regardless of condition.

But extremely high costs from the "sickest of the sick" forced Colorado to spend $22,500 per patient in the first year of the program, U.S. records show. The state has paid out $21.7 million in claims for 964 members of the pool.