Yes On Amendment 69
ColoradoCare Would Cover Everyone
By T. R. Reid
Special to the GPHN
Imagine what would happen if the voters of Colorado were to face a ballot initiative that said this:
“Shall Coloradans pay $35 billion next year to out-of-state health insurance companies that dictate which doctors we can see, deny 30 percent of all claims, and raise prices annually at 10 times the rate of inflation?”
Can you imagine anybody voting “Yes” to that proposition? In fact, though, we will be voting for precisely that situation if we vote “No” this fall on ballot Amendment 69, the proposal to start a Colorado-based health plan that will cover every resident of Colorado.
Voting “Yes” for Amendment 69 will create “ColoradoCare,” a Colorado-run competitor for the out-of-state giants. We need that competition, because the insurance companies have been gouging us year in and year out – and yet they provide no coverage at all to many of our neighbors.
Currently, hundreds of thousands of Coloradans have no health insurance. Hundreds of thousands more have insurance they can’t use, because the deductible is $5,000, $7,200, or even $9,000 per year. The result is fatal: According to the National Academy of Sciences, more than 500 of our neighbors in this state die every year because they couldn’t see a doctor.
Would anybody vote for that system? But that’s what we’ll get with a “No” vote on Amendment 69.
By contrast, under ColoradoCare everybody above the poverty line will pay for health insurance, and everybody will be covered.
Unlike the out-of-state insurers, the plan will cover every licensed provider in Colorado – which means that you, not your insurance company, can choose the doctor, chiropractor, physical therapist, etc.
Unlike the out-of-state insurers, ColoradoCare will have no deductible.
Unlike the big insurers, ColoradoCare will be run by Coloradans – by our neighbors, whom we get to elect. Currently, the decisions about health care coverage in this state are made by business executives in Minnesota (United HealthCare), Indiana (Anthem Blue Cross), and Connecticut (Cigna, Aetna). We have zero control over their decrees. With ColoradoCare, the voters of Colorado will be in control.
ColoradoCare will not be free. Health care is never free. In fact, the system will cost $38 billion per year. But since the federal government wants to encourage universal coverage, Washington, D.C. will pay one-third of that bill for us. The rest will come from a payroll tax, and a tax on non-payroll income, that will total $25 billion per year.
A $25 billion tax increase! Why would anybody vote for that? There’s a simple reason: It’s less than we’re paying now. This year, Colorado families and firms are paying $30 billion for health insurance premiums and deductibles. For next year, the out-of-state firms have filed plans that call for a more than 17 percent increase in premiums; that gets us to $35 billion in 2017.
That’s why all the independent analyses say that ColoradoCare – even at $25 billion per year – will save Coloradans billions of dollars. With ColoradoCare, you no longer have to pay premiums to the health insurance industry.
Amendment 69, in short, will set up a health plan that gives us greater coverage, greater control, and much lower costs than the out-of-state insurance giants. And that’s why the insurance industry wants you to vote “No.” Millions of dollars have poured into Colorado from Minnesota, Indiana, etc. to buy your vote.
If you give them the “No” vote they’re shopping for on Amendment 69, they can continue to reduce our choices, cut our benefits, deny our claims, and ratchet up premiums every year.
By voting “Yes” for Amendment 69, you will tell the out-of-state insurance companies to gouge people in some other state. Because Colorado can do better.
T. R. Reid, of Denver, is an author and documentary filmmaker. A longtime foreign correspondent and former Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief for the Washington Post, Reid is Chairman of the Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care.