Taking different routes, four proposals chosen by the state’s Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform all head in the same direction: access to care for everyone in Colorado.
“Our primary goal is to increase access to health care for all Coloradans,” Bill Lindsay, chairman of the commission, said Monday.
The challenge, Lindsay said, is to figure out how to accomplish that at a reasonable cost.
“There may be a significant price tag. That is a concern,” Lindsay said.
The commission solicited plans from health care providers, businesses, unions and public advocacy groups.
Two of the plans chosen as finalists – one submitted by the Colorado State Association of Health Underwriters and the other by the Committee for Colorado Health Solutions – would require everyone in the state to buy health insurance.
The plan would offer help to those who can’t afford it.
A proposal submitted by the Health Care for All Colorado Coalition would create a publicly controlled single-payer health care system.
The fourth, proposed by the Service Employees International Union, aims to reform Medicaid, expand public coverage and create a large insurance-buying pool.
Over the next six months, a consultant hired by the commission will comb through each plan and provide a detailed analysis of the costs, benefits, pitfalls and advantages of each.
The commissioners will then present the four plans, and the analyses – possibly adding a fifth plan of their devising – to state lawmakers at the 2008 session.
Any plan adopted by the legislature requiring a tax increase would have to be approved by voters, Lindsay said.
Thirty-one proposals for reforming health care were submitted to the commission, which has spent the past month evaluating them and winnowing the group, first to 11 and then the top four on Friday.
About 770,000 people in Colorado lack health insurance.
Commissioners intend to hold a series of hearings around the state to get public comment on the proposals.
Staff writer Karen Augé can be reached at 303-954-1733 or kauge@denverpost.com.
