Marketplace questions we answerMarketplace questions we answer on the phone every week

It depends on your household size, your estimated income for the coverage year, and the cost of a benchmark plan in your county. Most Coloradans who shop the marketplace qualify for something.

We’ll run your numbers with you before you look at a single plan, and it doesn’t cost anything or require an email address. Connect for Health Colorado makes the final determination on your application — nothing we tell you is a determination.

How the marketplace works

Your best estimate of the whole year, not this month multiplied by twelve. Self-employment, seasonal work, and commission income all make this hard, and everybody in that position feels like they’re guessing.

The estimate gets trued up against your actual income when you file. Guess high and money comes back. Guess low and you return the difference — and for coverage from 2026 on, there is no longer any cap on how much of it you return. Congress removed the ceiling that used to protect households under 400% of the Federal Poverty Level.

So the answer is not to guess high out of caution, which costs you help every month you didn’t need to give up. It’s to tell the exchange the week something changes. We do that with our clients rather than waiting for them to think of it.

For what counts as income in your situation, talk to your tax preparer. We help you fill in the number, we don’t give tax advice, and we won’t quote you a repayment figure.

No, and it is often the expensive one. Losing employer coverage opens a special enrollment period on the marketplace, where you may qualify for a premium tax credit that COBRA never comes with.

COBRA is sometimes still the right answer — mid-year deductible already met, a specialist you can’t interrupt. Compare both before the window closes rather than defaulting to the paperwork your employer handed you.

Losing employer coverage

Often, yes. Households are not required to sit on one plan, and splitting can make sense when one person needs a particular network or when one member is eligible for different coverage entirely.

It also complicates deductibles, out-of-pocket maximums, and how a premium tax credit is applied across the household. Do it on purpose, with someone who has seen it go wrong, rather than by accident.

No. Carriers pay brokers a commission that’s built into the premium and set by regulation, so your price is the same whether you enroll through us, through another agent, or entirely on your own. There is no Grove fee at any point.

The commission exists whether or not you use a broker. Not using one doesn’t get you a discount — it just means nobody is on your side of the table.

For Medicare Advantage and Part D, no — CMS caps what a broker can be paid and the cap applies to every carrier alike. It exists for exactly the reason you’d hope: so that the plan that pays us best and the plan that suits you best are not different plans.

Medicare Supplement and marketplace commissions are not capped the same way and do vary a little between carriers. So ask us. We will tell you what a plan pays us, and if the right recommendation is a plan that pays us less, that is the recommendation you’ll get.

How we’re paid, in full

For individual and family coverage, yes. Grove is a certified Connect for Health Colorado broker, so every plan on the Colorado exchange is one we can enroll you in — there is nothing on that marketplace we are keeping back from you.

For Medicare, no broker does, and anyone who says otherwise should be treated carefully. We’re appointed with the major Colorado carriers, and the required disclosure on our Medicare disclosures page says exactly which of them we represent.

If the right plan for you is one we can’t sell, we’ll tell you that and point you at Medicare.gov, 1-800-MEDICARE, or Connect for Health Colorado. We would rather lose the sale than have you in the wrong plan for a year.

Read the required disclosures

No. The same advisor stays on your file. Plans change every year — networks drop doctors, drug formularies move, premiums move — and the point of using a broker is having somebody who notices.

We check in before each Annual Enrollment Period and tell you whether your plan still fits. Sometimes the answer is that it does and there’s nothing to do.

No. We do not do group or employer-sponsored coverage, and we do not set up ICHRAs. Saying so now is cheaper for you than finding out after a meeting.

Two things we can still do. If you are the owner and you buy your own coverage, that is exactly what we do — a lot of our marketplace clients are self-employed. And if you already have an offer at work and cannot tell whether it rules your household out of marketplace help, that is a real question with a real answer and we will run it with you.

Coverage when you are self-employed

Yes, and it doesn’t change your coverage. Moving your agent of record is paperwork between us and the carrier — your plan, your doctors, your premium, and your card all stay exactly as they are.

You do not need a reason and you do not need to tell your current agent anything.

We do not sell your information. Not to lead brokers, not to other agencies, not to anyone. The tool we use to count visits cannot tell us who you are. We do use Google’s advertising tag to learn whether an ad led to a booking or a call, and it never runs on the enrollment worksheet. The booking calendar on one page is Cal.com’s software and brings its own cookies; the privacy policy lists every one of them.

The Medicare and marketplace lead business largely runs on selling contact details, which is why the phone starts ringing after you fill in a comparison form somewhere. Tell us to stop contacting you and we stop. Once is enough.

Our privacy policy

Yes. Plenty of our appointments have an adult child on the call, and that is a good idea rather than an imposition — two people hear more than one.

For anything that needs a signature, someone can act on your behalf with your authorization, and the paperwork records that they did. Have them join the call, or put them on speaker.

Some of it, and we would rather be straight about which. We can work with an interpreter or a family member you bring, for as long as it takes. TTY 711 reaches us through the free national relay service.

What we do not have is a bilingual advisor on staff, an interpreter service on retainer, translation of documents into any other language, or braille and large-print production of our own. If that is what you need, Connect for Health Colorado and 1-800-MEDICARE both staff interpreters in many languages at no cost, and we will point you there rather than waste your time.

Asking for any of this changes nothing about what you can enroll in or what it costs.

What we can and cannot do

Less than you think. Your ZIP code, a list of your prescriptions with doses, and the names of the doctors you want to keep will get us most of the way.

You do not need to have read anything first, and you do not need to know what Part C is. That is our job.