The Post editorial: Replacing private health insurance industry with a public option is too great a gamble.»

The temptation to replace the private health insurance industry with a public option (or mandate) is understandable but not sensible, like the temptation to gamble in pursuit of the big payoff.

However, the temptation is fraught with dangers; so many, that we vehemently oppose any effort to tread that path in Colorado or for the entire nation.

Colorado gubernatorial candidate Cary Kennedy is proposing a Medicaid-for-all insurance program in the state. U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders proposed a Medicare-for-All system for the nation that is gaining traction among Democrats.

To be clear, Kennedy is not proposing that a single-payer system take over the state; Sanders is proposing a single-payer takeover of the nation using the federal insurance program for older Americans.

Kennedy’s plan is more akin to a public option — the type of option this board has long considered as a possible solution to some of what ails the Affordable Care Act’s individual marketplaces. But we supported the concept at the federal level, where the pool of those buying insurance on the individual market would be large enough to be actuarially sound. While not impossible, a state-wide plan would be much more difficult.

And Kennedy’s proposal to house it within Colorado’s Medicaid program — the state’s insurance provider for the poor and disabled — would be a complete disaster. Administrators of that program are not in the business of assessing risk, setting premiums and deductibles and considering the long-term soundness of a plan.

Rather, Medicaid is a passthrough entity that has both a set per-person revenue stream from the state and federal government and set reimbursement rates to providers (note that those provider rates are far lower than what the private insurance market pays to doctors and hospitals).

The risk would be that Colorado taxpayers would end up bailing out the new Colorado-only public option when those insured proved too expensive to insure and too poor to shoulder adequate premiums and deductibles.

Kennedy also is considering placing the public option within the state employee health care plan. But state employees are offered plans through UnitedHealthcare and Kaiser Permanente, depending in part on where in the state they live, and it’s unclear if those private businesses would consider opening up these policies to compete with their products offered on Connect for Health Colorado, the state’s individual marketplace. Those plans lack the same assurances of continued coverage that insurers gain through the employer system.

Much more appealing is Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper’s “public option” proposal that he is floating with Gov. John Kasich, a Republican from Ohio. That plan proposes opening the Federal Employee Benefit Program to residents in areas with only one health insurance provider, like some on Colorado’s Western Slope. Starting a public option with a limited offering across the nation to immediately service those in need of additional health care options is enticing, although more details are needed.

Meanwhile, Sanders’ legislation fails to detail the most critical question: how would this new universal health insurance be funded? Aides told The Associated Press that it would be funded through premiums on those who can afford to pay, but not for those who cannot.

We’re talking about setting up a cash-flow through the government of $1.6 trillion dollars to cover the entire nation’s health care costs.

Betting big on Medicare and Colorado’s Medicaid systems are simply gambles we’re not willing to take, and the American taxpayers should stand against such measures, too.