Hospital officials and advocates for the uninsured argued today in favor of a bill that would impose a fee on Colorado hospitals to generate a total of $1.2 billion for expanded health care programs.
But Republicans on the House Health and Human Services Committee questioned whether the new programs were sustainable and asked if insured patients would ultimately bear higher costs.
After a nearly seven hour hearing, the committee approved the bill on a 5-4, party-line vote, and it now heads to the House Appropriations Committee.
House Bill 1293, sponsored by Rep. Jim Riesberg, D-Greeley, and Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, would impose a fee on hospitals, although the exact formula has yet to be determined. The fees would generate an estimated $600 million, which the state could then use to draw down an equal amount of federal funds to expand health care programs such as Medicaid and the Children’s Basic Health Plan, or CHP+ and to pay hospitals higher Medicaid rates for taking care of those patients and indigents.
Some 800,000 Coloradans lack health insurance, including an estimated 180,000 children.
The programs would provide coverage to an estimated 100,000 Coloradans who are now uninsured.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, at least 43 states and the District of Columbia impose some sort of fee on medical-service providers. Of those states, at least 20 – including Kansas – levy fees on hospitals.
The programs would start in 2010, provided the state gets federal approval.
A legislative analysis said the fees in 2010 would total about $5 million a year for hospitals with fewer than 25 beds and $158.3 million for hospitals with 300 or more beds.
The bill would expand the eligibility level for CHP+ from 205 percent of the federal poverty level to 250 percent, covering a family of four with an income of $55,125 a year. The legislation would increase Medicaid eligibility for parents from the current level of 60 percent of the federal poverty level to 100 percent.
And it would provide coverage for the first time to childless, single adults who are at 100 percent of the federal poverty level, or those who make $10,830 or less.
Republican committee members like Rep. Spencer Swalm, R-Centennial, though, questioned the wisdom of “adding new classes of beneficiaries in the face of this economic downturn.”
Rep. Cheri Gerou, R-Evergreen, went further.
“This is a move toward socialized medicine,” she said.
The bill contains language prohibiting hospitals from shifting the costs of paying the fee onto insured patients. However, Republicans questioned how that was possible.
But proponents of the bill said it would diminish the cost-shifting to the insured public that already occurs when hospitals don’t get paid for taking care of those without insurance.
Republican attempts to strip out the expanded health care programs failed.
Tim Hoover: 303-954-1626 or thoover@denverpost.com
