Health commission chair: work won't be done

David Montero, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 19, 2007 at midnight

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The chairman of the commission tasked with health care reform said this morning the group is underfunded, lacked enough time and simply can't fix the state's health care crisis this year.

Bill Lindsay made the comments during and after a panel discussion sponsored by the Colorado State Association of Underwriters at the Pepsi Center.

He said many things were beyond the purview of the commission, including studying the impact of technology on the system and the way providers are reimbursed through Medicaid and Medicare. Lindsay said those were significant factors needed to be studied that were not able to be addressed by the commission.

"Unfortunately, the commission would have loved to have the time, the staff and budget to get into these items," Lindsay said. "But that wasn't available to us."

Lindsay said the best the commission could do would be to make improvements in some areas of health care, but solving the problems wouldn't happen with this commission.

"This is just the beginning of a journey," he said.

The Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform was created by General Assembly in 2006 and sought a variety of proposals to tackle the problems of rising health care costs and the rising population of the uninsured — numbering more than 780,000 in Colorado.

From that, four proposals submitted by different interest groups laid out their formulas for health care reform. A fifth proposal is currently being hashed out by the 208 Commission and a first draft of that is due Monday.

The commission is supposed to have its work completed by the end of January. Lawmakers will then have the option to pick any or none of the proposals to draft into legislation.

Lindsay said Colorado vastly underestimated the amount of money that would be needed to seriously reform the current system. The bill that created the commission allocated $100,000 to study the issue.

But the chairman said other states studying health care reform were given in excess of $1 million by their state lawmakers. To get to that figure, Lindsay said the commission had to raise the money by soliciting foundations and collecting donations.

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