Denver, CO – The government is about to “compete” in the private marketplace for health care. Yes, we know that technically with Medicaid and Medicare, the government pays for health care. However, the Democrats in the Colorado Legislature want to create a taxpayer-funded insurance plan that will force all insurance carriers to offer it to consumers.
The fact that the government is forcing private businesses to sell a government product is bad enough with this piece of legislation. But what is worse, is taxpayers will be funding people who pick this plan. Also, this plan puts price controls on services and goods (pharmaceuticals), that will make this plan automatically (although artificially) competitive with the private plans.
With the price controls, members of this public option plan will have cheaper services on paper, but taxpayers and price controls will subsidize it. This means that the actual cost of the health care services will be shared amongst private insurers. The added costs will result in higher premiums and costs of services for other insurance plans.
The other problem with price controls is that if these do not cover the costs associated with providing care, it will force care providers to close. This will result in less available care. So, if you understand basic supply and demand economic principles if demand goes up or stays constant, while supply (the services) go down, it increases costs. Also, you will be waiting a lot longer to get services.
The legislation, HB20-1349, introduced on Thursday, March 5, by Senator Kerry Donovan (D-Vail), and Representatives Dylan Roberts (D-Steamboat Springs) and Chris Kennedy (D-Golden) will be heard this Wednesday in the House Health & Insurance Committee in House Committee Room 0112 (In the basement) of the State Capitol. Usually, when the Democrats want to pass bad legislation, they expedite it. Clearly, this is the case with this bill, and it gets a committee hearing less than a week after the introduction. This isn’t unprecedented, but this trick is frowned upon. The opposition doesn’t have much time to organize testimony, and that’s EXACTLY what the Democrats want.
Some other draconian provisions of the bill allow the Colorado Insurance Commissioner to revoke a hospital’s license if they don’t participate in the plan. In a nutshell, if you don’t participate, we will shut you down! That is government force at its finest!
This public plan also relies heavily on getting matching funds from the federal government. Without going too far in the weeds, hospitals charge a fee (AKA a tax) to everyone who uses their services, called “The Hospital Provider Fee.” This is collected and goes into a cash fund. The federal government is supposed to match this amount, and combined with the collected fee; this is used by the State of Colorado to reimburse the hospitals. This is all taxpayer dollars, folks. You will pay for this one way or another.
What do you think of this Colorado Public Insurance option? Should a private business be forced to sell a government service? What do you think about hospitals being forced to accept this new public plan or lose their license for not accepting this plan? Please post your comments below and on our social media!
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Doctors who went to med school to get rich are revolting.