Health care panel lays out map for uninsured
Report to lawmakers is due today
By Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)
Published January 31, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.
No one expects that expanding health care coverage to the state's nearly 800,000 uninsured will be quick or easy.
But members of the state's Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform think that their recommendations will provide a good road map to eventually come closer to that goal.
That was what some of the panel members told a forum at Children's Hospital on Wednesday, providing something of a dress rehearsal for the panel's formal presentation to Colorado's legislature today.
The panel's recommendations range from ways to increase the number of family practice physicians to streamlining claims paperwork. But the center of the proposals is a mandate that all Coloradans purchase health insurance and that the state provide affordable options to individuals based on a sliding scale of their income.The cost of implementing the proposals runs around $1.1 billion.
"This is a building block process," said Bill Lindsay, chairman of the commission.
The panel was formed by the legislature in 2006 to develop ways to cover the uninsured and identify ways to control the cost. The committee's 27 members, who come from a range of political backgrounds, sorted through 31 submissions before ultimately settling on four to analyze. It then drafted a fifth, incorporating the mandate to require the purchase of insurance.
The idea behind the mandate is that requiring all Coloradans to be part of the "risk pool" of insurance would ultimately drive down costs. Insured families pay about $950 extra each year in health care costs to cover uninsured persons who end up in hospital emergency rooms, according to Families USA.
The panel decided to build on the current system of primarily employer-provided health care coverage. Nearly 60 percent of the state's 4.5 million residents receive insurance through their or a family member's employer, said Donald Kortz, chairman of Fuller Real Estate Co. and a committee member.
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