Re: Aug. 19 editorial.
Congratulations on a wonderful and revealing editorial.
I have been the chair of the Colorado Commission on Affordable Health Care for the past three years. For the past two years I have been attempting to obtain the very statistics that Denver Post reporter John Ingold , and you highlighted in your editorial. Despite that effort, I was stonewalled. No one was able or willing to come forth with the data.
Over the past two years in Colorado, and nationally, there has been a growing concern raised about the rapidly escalating cost of Medicaid, the impact on the states, and how to address it. The question of “why” has eluded us until now. My question had long been, “Who are those people?” because the federal match for the expansion population is 90 percent while the match for the traditional Medicaid enrollment (poor, elderly, disabled and children) is only 50 percent.
The answer to this question, now resolved, is of vital importance to policymakers since controlling the cost of the traditionally eligible is much tougher than addressing the expansion population through rolling back eligibility or funding cuts.
We can now focus our attention on how to improve the efficiency of traditional Medicaid. Nevertheless, one prominent issue remains: Why did state policymakers not push for this answer themselves, and why did those responsible for state expenditures not focus their attention on the matter all along?
¾Ի, Denver
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