DENVER—Colorado Republicans aren’t faring well on their major health care proposals this year.
A Republican bill to repeal Colorado’s health insurance exchange was defeated 5-4 Thursday in a Democrat-controlled Senate committee. The committee is led by the Democratic senator who proposed the exchange last year.
“I’m under no illusion this bill will make it out of Senate chambers,” one of the repeal sponsors, Republican Rep. Marsha Looper, told committee members before they voted.
The same committee last week voted down a Republican idea to seek a federal Medicaid waiver. GOP leaders have said a federal waiver is crucial to trim health care costs. Democrats have called the waiver idea wishful thinking that could hurt the needy if approved.
The health insurance exchange is unpopular with some Republicans because it is a required element of the federal health care law.
The exchange—a marketplace required by the federal health care law—was approved last year with support from Senate Democrats and leading Republicans in the House.
But the House exchange sponsor, House Republican Leader Stephens, has come under withering assault by some in the GOP who argue the exchange is tantamount to embracing the health care law. Looper is challenging Stephens in a GOP primary later this year, so Looper’s sponsorship of the exchange repeal signaled a challenge to Stephens’ idea.
Looper called the exchange “an elaborate big-government health care program.”
Stephens has insisted the insurance exchange gives Colorado independence from the federal government because the federal government will create exchanges for states that don’t create their own.
Republicans in favor of repeal argued that because Colorado is among the states challenging the health care law, it should wait to set up an exchange until the federal law is settled in court.
The repeal sponsor, Sen. Tim Neville, called the exchange “a hasty response to a set of circumstances that may totally change.”
Democratic Sen. Betty Boyd, sponsor of the exchange and chairwoman of the committee that heard the repeal proposal, argued that repeal opponents were arguing against the federal health care law, not Colorado’s exchange.
“The Colorado exchange is designed to be successful regardless of what happens with the federal government,” Boyd said.
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Online:
Health exchange bill, Senate Bill 53:
