Medicaid expansion in Colorado

The question of the year:
Colorado has the Tabor amendment which requires lawmakers to send to the voters any tax increase.  If The Hick is correct, the medicaid expansion will not affect the budget.  Politicians are rarely correct and I suspect he will be wrong and additional taxes will be required.  Colorado voters enacted the Tabor amendment several years ago.  The Tabor amendment  stipulates the state cannot keep excess tax dollars above the specified amount which is determined by law and must return the excess dollars to the taxpayers.  

With a strong state economy, meeting the Federal cost of Medicaid 10% should not be problem.  When a recession begins again as it always does,  meeting the cost will become a major issue for the state budget.  Taxpayers in Colorado limit state expansion by refusing to increase state taxes.  Will the state sacrifice school spending for  medicaid?  Reduce benefits offered by Medicaid?  

Accepting the medicaid expansion was poorly thought out and will be passing the problem to a future governor.  The Hick shpuld have called for a tax increase to pay for the medicaid expansion instead of saying it may pay for itself.  Another example of poor government.


DENVER (AP) – An expansion of Medicaid eligibility that’s expected to add 160,000 adults to public health care assistance in Colorado was signed into law Monday.
The expansion is part of the federal health care overhaul that 22 states and Washington, D.C., have accepted as of last week.
Supporters of the expansion say it will reduce health care costs in the long run.
“Because we know that the healthier we keep our population, the better we control our costs,” said Sen. Irene Aguilar, D-Denver, a sponsor of the Colorado bill.
But most Republicans voted against the expansion, saying the state’s cost can balloon once the federal government stops paying for growing the program. The federal government covers the entire cost of the expansion for the first three years.
“We can’t afford it,” said Republican Sen. Kevin Lundberg, of Berthoud. Colorado will be on the hook “down the road for Medicaid dollars we don’t have,” he said.
Fourteen states have rejected the Medicaid expansion, which was made optional by the U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year on the federal health care law. Another 14 states were still deciding whether to expand as of last week.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper signed his state’s measure Monday afternoon outside the Capitol.
“This is going to support working Coloradoans and improve economic security for individuals and families and ultimately even for businesses,” he said.
The Democratic governor has said the expansion would cost Colorado about $128 million over the next 10 years. But he insists there’s $280 million in cuts and savings to Medicaid that he has identified that can more than pay for the expansion. Some of those cuts and savings would include better use of technology by Medicaid-funded doctors and efforts to reduce waste.