Source: Colorado Politics
Democratic state lawmakers and health care professionals across Colorado are warning of the potential devastation that could result from the proposed changes to Medicaid outlined in the Republican-backed federal budget.
Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie, D-Dillon, and Democratic members of the General Assembly’s Joint Budget Committee joined representatives from three of the state’s safety net providers for a virtual press conference to discuss the budget currently being debated in the U.S. Senate.
Earlier today, state House and Senate Democrats announced that they had sent a letter to Colorado’s congressional delegation, urging them to vote against what President Donald Trump has called the “Big Beautiful Bill.” The bill cleared the House last week by a single vote.
“We strongly oppose President Trump’s and Congressional Republicans’ tax ploy that will kick Coloradans off Medicaid and cut food assistance to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans,” the lawmakers wrote. “The legislation threatens the Colorado way of life by making it harder for hardworking families to put food on the table and access medical care. Under the ruse of “cutting waste, fraud and abuse,” the bill is nothing more than tax cuts and deregulation for the richest people in our nation at the expense of those most in need.”
According to the letter, Colorado hospitals, clinics, and other providers could lose up to $990 million in annual Medicaid funding if the bill passes as currently written.
The budget also proposes implementing new copays for low-income patients, who make as little as $22,000 a year.
“This will force hardworking Coloradans to delay necessary procedures or care and ultimately rely more on emergency room care, straining rural and other hospitals that are already near the breaking point,” the legislators wrote.
During the press conference, Dr. Steve Federico, a pediatrician and chief of government affairs for Denver Health, stated that over 180,000 Coloradans could lose their healthcare coverage if the bill is signed into law. Other estimates put that number closer to 230,000.
“The net result is more uninsured, more uncompensated care, more patients foregoing care and waiting until something is an emergency, ultimately risking their lives, and in the end, costing the system more money,” he said.
Denver Health is the state’s largest safety net provider, with about half of its patients enrolled in Medicaid. Federico criticized the budget’s proposal to require Medicaid recipients to reenroll every six months and be employed to receive coverage as impractical and unreasonable.
“We have been down this path before, making it hard on low-income families to sign up for health insurance simply to save money in the short run,” he said. “It makes no sense. The intent is to have people disenroll to save money in the short run, make no mistake about it. When similar policies have been enacted in the past, health systems like Denver Health have witnessed the hardship that families go through. Patients do not even know they’ve been disenrolled until they try and renew their much-needed medication or schedule an essential procedure and are then told they have to pay out of pocket.”
If the cuts are enacted, health care facilities will face increased operating costs, and everyone, regardless of income level, will see an increase in their insurance premium costs, said Rep. Shannon Bird, D-Westminster, vice chair of the Joint Budget Committee.
Bird recently announced that she is running in the 2026 Democratic primary election for Congressional District 8. Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans currently holds the seat.
She said about a third of all residents in CD 8 would lose access to their health care coverage — coverage they’re paying for with their tax dollars, Bird added — if the bill passes.
“This money is coming into the state of Colorado,” she said. “These are federal tax dollars that the people of Colorado have paid the federal government with the full expectation that our federal government would be a strong partner with us as we work to make sure that the most vulnerable among us have access to this money so that they have access to health care.”
Colorado is no stranger to cutting budgets, said JBC Chair Sen. Jeff Bridges, D-Greenwood Village. However, legislators were able to pass the state budget with bipartisan support, something this “Big Beautiful Bill” has failed to garner.
“If they were thoughtful about this, if they were strategic, if they were bipartisan in the way that we have been here in Colorado, this wouldn’t be the bill that we’re seeing coming out of Washington,” he said.
If the budget passes, the state will incur about $57 million in administrative expenses alone, according to estimates by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. That money will come directly from the state’s General Fund, said Bird.
“So instead of being able to put more money into our public schools or into transportation or keeping costs down for higher education or other public policy goals that the people of Colorado expect us to fund,, we would be taking that $57 million and using it to grow a bureaucracy to manage a program that has been tried before in other states and has never yielded the results that this Congress is promising.”
The U.S. Senate is expected to make changes to the bill, although the exact nature of those changes is not yet known. If changes are made, it will go back to the House for concurrence. The bill will need a simple majority vote to pass and Republicans have stated they have set a July 4 deadline for the bill to clear both chambers.
