Coloradans consider universal healthcare

Next week Colorado will decide whether to become the first state in the nation to provide universal healthcare coverage. The ballot initiative, Amendment 69, would establish a 10 percent payroll tax to fund the creation of ColoradoCare, a single payer system.

Polls are predicting a “no” vote. The latest, a September survey by Colorado Mesa University, found support for Amendment 69 at about 30 percent, with 56 percent opposing the measure and 14 percent undecided.

Opponents say the plan would drive business out of the state. The proposed 10 percent payroll tax—with employers paying two-thirds and employees paying one-third—would make Colorado one of the highest taxed states in the union.

State officials concur: A bipartisan group including the governor, secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer, and more than 50 U.S. and state legislators oppose the measure.

“While I realize that there’s a lot of uncertainty regarding healthcare coverage by many Coloradans, this is absolutely not the answer,” Colorado Treasurer Walker Stapleton said. “This will result in $25 billion in unfunded liabilities in Colorado, and the people who will bear the brunt of this cost will be our employers …”

Both NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado and Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains also oppose the measure because they say it will restrict access to elective abortions. A 1984 ballot initiative prohibits the use of Colorado public funds to pay for abortions. ColoradoCare advocates argue the program’s board of trustees would be able to authorize abortion services once the measure passes, but pro-abortion organizations are not so sure.

“Unfortunately we’re not willing to take that risk,” Karen Middleton, executive director for NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado, told Mother Jones. Leaving out explicit language allowing for abortion is the plan’s “fatal flaw,” she said.

Amendment 69 supporters say the measure will simplify a broken healthcare system, save money, and cover everyone. The plan boasts no deductibles and no copays for primary or preventative care.

But economists argue the inevitable result of a state-run system is a “regulatory regime” that ultimately has to “ration” healthcare for its residents.

“If healthcare becomes a free good, you have a fundamental economic dynamic that goes into effect,” Bob Moffit, senior fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Health Policy Studies, told me. “The demand for a free good is literally unlimited. Unlimited demand collides with limited supply and someone is going to have to make a very difficult decision of who gets care, when they get it, and under what circumstances.”

Under the measure, voters would elect a 21-member board of trustees to oversee ColoradoCare. The board would hire an executive team, establish a Central Purchasing Authority, and manage coverage and payment decisions.

“Your doctor is not calling the shots here,” Moffit said, predicting an inevitable conversation in which a state official tells a patient that though a doctor has prescribed a certain treatment, procedure, or drug, the state has “decided that you don’t need it.”

Next week, Coloradans also are considering Proposition 106, which would legalize physician-assisted suicide. In the unlikely case that both measures pass, Colorado would be in a position to restrict certain expensive treatments while allowing very inexpensive “end of life” drugs.

After California’s physician-assisted suicide law went into effect this summer, one woman, who tells her story in a Center for Bioethics and Culture documentary, said her insurance company told her it would not pay for a critical chemotherapy treatment but would be more than happy to cover the $1.20 life-ending drugs.