We fought for Coloradans’ pocketbooks this year

When I delivered my first State of the State address back in January, I said that our administration’s mission and mandate from the voters began with tackling the everyday challenges that Coloradans face because of the rising cost of living in our state. By reducing health care costs, saving families money on preschool and kindergarten, and helping Colorado retailers with the cost of retaining sales taxes — all of which we accomplished during this year’s legislative session — we can help Coloradans continue to thrive in our amazing state.

Everywhere I go in our state,

people tell me how much they are sick and tired of being ripped off by our health care system, from out-of-network “surprise” billing to expensive hospital stays, prescription drugs and insurance premiums.

So we tackled surprise out-of-network billing to protect families from unexpected health care bills.

We passed a hospital transparency law so we can identify and address the cost drivers that lead to outrageously high hospital bills that leave hardworking Coloradans footing the bill for massive hospital profits while empowering market competition to bring down rates across the board.

We became the first state in the nation to cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $100 per month, relieving families who were paying between $600-900 per month for insulin. And we are taking steps to legally and safely import prescription drugs from Canada so that everyone who is paying an arm and a leg for medicine can purchase it safely at a lower cost.

We passed a bill called reinsurance to rein in high insurance costs — a proven tactic that has reduced premiums in the individual market by double digits in other states.

And we laid the groundwork for a state-based insurance option that will increase competition, lower costs, and give consumers more freedom and more choice when it comes to selecting a health plan that works for them.

We did this all on a bipartisan basis because I want to work with anyone who has good ideas to reduce health care costs for Coloradans.

We also successfully worked together to provide free full-day kindergarten for every child in Colorado.

Free full-day kindergarten isn’t just about providing our young kids with a better education and investing in the workforce of the future — it’s about keeping our economy growing today.

Parents will have more flexibility to return to full-time work, and now that they won’t be spending up to $500 each month to send their children to kindergarten, they will have more flexibility in the family budget too. These savings will help families make ends meet and will stimulate the economy, benefiting everyone.

At the other end of the education spectrum, we were proud to freeze tuition for the vast majority of students attending public colleges in our state.

Another one of my priorities is

to address our tax code, which gives too much power to special interests, asks too much of middle-class and working families, and starves our schools and our transportation infrastructure of much-needed funding.

We took the first steps in tax reform this year by increasing the amount of sales tax money that small retailers can keep. That will benefit 144,000 small businesses in Colorado, which we know are the engine of our economic growth. And under state law, the property tax assessment rate will be reduced from 7.2 percent to 7.15 percent for homeowners, who are having a harder and harder time because of rising home values.

Best of all, most of the progress we made this year was done on a bipartisan basis. Over 95 percent of new laws — including universal full-day kindergarten and all of the health care bills mentioned above — passed with Democratic and at least some Republican support, showing that even in an era of divided politics, Coloradans can work together to accomplish major goals.

Our state’s future success will hinge on our ability to adapt to our growth, our ability to preserve our Colorado way of life by keeping our state affordable, and our ability to work together to solve big problems.

If this past legislative session is any indication, I’m confident that we can continue to deliver real results to save Coloradans money.