Colorado Dems are prying the door back open for a single-payer system

With their latest push to explore replacing our state’s entire health insurance system with a one-size-fits-all government-controlled “single-payer” scheme, Democratic legislators are pursuing highly divisive, ideologically driven health care legislation that would only result in negative consequences for Coloradans. They do so despite the fact that a singlepayer system would come with unaffordably high costs and after 80% of Colorado voters rejected single-payer at the polls in 2016.

House Bill 1075 purports to be a “study,” but its directive is clearly a foregone conclusion, telling the CU School of Public Health what the outcome should be, which isn’t the point of a study. Furthermore, as is typically the case, not all relevant stakeholders are invited to the table.

The Colorado chapter of the National Association of Benefit and Insurance Professionals note, for instance, that no one from the insurance industry, who have contended with the many challenges of providing benefits to enrollees for decades, was included on the “study’s” advisory task force.

Rather than pursuing partisan policies that leave many Coloradans’ perspectives and needs out of the conversation, we should be working together on policy solutions that most Coloradans can agree on.

Our state’s recent experiences, both with the failed proposal to create single-payer health care and the ongoing failures of the Colorado Option, have already shown us that a state government-controlled health insurance system is not the solution to making health care more affordable or accessible in Colorado.

In 2016, the Colorado Health Institute estimated that a single-payer system would cost almost $62 billion per year by 2028, an amount higher than our entire state budget. That same year, nearly 80 percent of Coloradans wisely voted against a single-payer ballot measure. Across party lines, Coloradans united to reject the high costs and immense risks to access that a one-size-fits-all health care system would bring. Why then, do some Democratic lawmakers continue to push for this policy?

We know the negative consequences that a partisan, ideologically driven approach to lawmaking delivers. Coloradans are currently experiencing the effects of that approach with another governmentbacked health care program, the Colorado Option. When Democrats in the state legislature rushed through partyline legislation to create the Colorado Option in 2021, they promised that it would lower premiums and expand consumer choice. Three years later, it has not only failed to deliver on those promises, but has in fact delivered the precise opposite result.

With the state governmentcontrolled Colorado Option, premiums continue to rise, and coverage options are fewer. According to the official rates released by the Colorado Division of Insurance itself, premiums in the individual market rose this year by 10 percent, just as they did last year. What’s more, in many counties Colorado Option plans are not the least expensive coverage option.

Since the Colorado Option’s implementation, four insurance carriers have left the state, leaving consumers with fewer coverage options to choose from. Setting unsustainable rates and manipulating the health insurance market simply does not work.

We have seen that the best way to meet Coloradans’ needs and enact effective policies is to work across the aisle to reach agreement on common-sense solutions that benefit our whole state. If you need an example, just look to our recent achievements with reinsurance and mental health care.

Colorado Republicans have demonstrated our willingness to show up and work on effective health care reform; we just need a seat at the table.

Consumers need better choices and an easier system to navigate. It’s time for our Democratic colleagues to acknowledge that there is a better way to address health care costs that doesn’t impose an unaffordable state government-controlled health insurance system on Colorado patients and taxpayers.