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Legislature 2009: 'Holding pattern' for health care

By Myung Oak Kim, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 2, 2009 at 12:05 a.m.
Updated January 2, 2009 at 1:23 a.m.

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State lawmakers have ambitious health care goals, including proposals to provide universal coverage for Coloradans. But chances are slim that broad health care reform will be enacted this session, lawmakers said.

Incoming House Speaker Terrance Carroll, D-Denver, said the state is in a "holding pattern" with health care reform.

Carroll wants to give every person access to high-quality health care. He supports single-payer, Canada-style health care. But with an estimated $13 billion startup cost, and the prospect of a $604 million budget deficit because of the recession, the state can't afford it right now.

State Rep. Mary Hodge, D-Brighton, said smaller-scale proposals could be passed.

The major hope among many lawmakers is a measure that would alter the way hospitals get reimbursed by the federal government for Medicaid patients. This plan could bring state hospitals more than $600 million in additional federal funds, lawmakers said.

"It's a very big project," said incoming state Rep. Sal Pace, D-Pueblo. He said the measure is being spearheaded by the governor's office.

The plan also would give slightly more money to hospitals that treat low-income patients, Pace said.

In other health care matters, Pace will sponsor a bill that would allow doctors at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo to treat new patients more quickly.

Now, patients who don't give consent for treatment can languish for weeks until staff members get an order from a judge to administer care, he said.

Hodge wants to speed up the process allowing out-of-state dentists to practice at the University of Colorado Anschutz campus in Aurora.

The dental school requested this legislation so that dentists with licenses from other states can practice on campus while waiting to get their Colorado license, she said.

kimm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2361. Staff writer Ed Sealover contributed to this report.

Comments

  • January 2, 2009

    10:48 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    BrianSchwartz writes:

    "Canada-style health care"? Having coverage does not guarantee care:

    * The Globe and Mail reports that “More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year – in what a doctors’ group attributes to the lack of a national birthing plan.”

    * The Canadian Medical Association Journal reports that in one year, 71 Ontario patients died while waiting for coronary bypass surgery and over one hundred more became “medically unfit for surgery.”

    * The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports that “109 people had a heart attack or suffered heart failure while on the waiting list. Fifty of those patients died.”

    * The Globe and Mail reported that “Inside Sylvia de Vries lurked an enormous tumour and fluid totaling 18 kilograms. But not even that massive weight gain and a diagnosis of ovarian cancer could assure her timely treatment in Canada.”

    * The Globe and Mail also reported that “More than 400 Canadians in the full throes of a heart attack or other cardiac emergency have been sent to the United States because no hospital can provide the lifesaving care they require here.”

    * "Access to a waiting list is not access to healthcare,” wrote Canadian Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin in a decision that decriminalized non-government insurance.

    Source:
    http://www.patientpowernow.org/2008/0...

    Instead, how about allowing people to buy affordable insurance across state lines, and turning the budget-eating Medicaid into a voucher program for private insurance and give tax credits -- drawn on the Medicaid fund -- for those who donate to health related charities, so Medicaid competes fairly w/ other charities.