By Gene Davis, DENVER DAILY NEWS
It’s ‘game on, baby’ for a controversial ballot initiative that could exempt Colorado from major portions of federal health reform signed into law by President Barack Obama in March.
The Colorado Secretary of State announced yesterday that ‘The Right to Health Care Choice’ citizens’ initiative had enough valid signatures to get on the November ballot. The initiative, which is the brainchild of Jon Caldara’s Independence Institute, a Golden-based libertarian think tank, will ask voters to exempt Colorado from parts of the recent health care reform, including a provision requiring citizens and business owners to buy health insurance or pay a penalty.
“After many legal challenges, the people of Colorado will finally get an opportunity to decide whether health care choice is a right,” said a statement from Caldara, who is also the chairman of the Health Care Choice for Colorado Issue Committee.
Critics of the measure refute Caldara’s claim that federal health care reform forces people into specific plans.
Kjersten Forseth, interim executive director of ProgressNow Colorado, said earlier this month that Americans still have a choice over what plans they choose and what doctors they see. She said Caldara’s ballot initiative would tear apart the reform effort, impacting how seniors pay for prescription drugs, how children receive care, how students receive insurance, and how people with pre-existing medical conditions find insurance, to name a few concerns.
“It’s important for people to understand how absolutely detrimental it would be for us to repeal health care reform,” said Forseth. “There’s just some really important parts of health care reform that we can’t afford to lose, and that we’ve been looking so forward to.”
An opposition campaign to the initiative, Colorado Deserves Better, was announced earlier this month. The campaign includes a coalition of physicians, hospitals, consumer advocates and religious organizations. They say Caldara’s initiative would isolate Colorado from health care costs savings by shrinking the risk pool.
“In this economy, higher health care prices mean trouble for Colorado,” Edie Sonn, spokesman for the Colorado Medical Society, said in a statement. “Caldara’s amendment does exactly that: cost us money.”
But Caldara said the initiative opponents have it wrong. He believes the majority of Coloradans agree that people shouldn’t be ‘forced’ into buying health care; Caldara submitted more than 130,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s office earlier this month to get the measure on the ballot.
“We’re going to make Colorado a sanctuary state for quality health care,” Caldara said. “How they can argue that Coloradans should not have choice in their health care, in that somehow it’s good to force people into health care plans they do not want, is mystifying to me.”
Caldara had a tough road getting the measure onto the ballot. As part of his effort, Caldara fought a new state law prohibiting citizens from paying circulators by the signature. Circulators must be paid mostly by the hour.
Critics say the law has resulted in quotes jumping in price by the equivalent of about $2 per signature. Caldara and marijuana advocate Mason Tvert sued the state over the law, arguing that the new law has driven up the cost of collecting signatures so high that it has become almost impossible to run a citizen initiative.
A U.S. District Court judge in June issued an injunction against the law, allowing Caldara to move forward with his initiative. And with a press release issued yesterday, Caldara seemed to be in a fighting mood against the opponents and lawsuits that tried to stop the initiative from moving forward.
“To all the interest groups that have worked so hard to keep us off the ballot, I’ve got three words for you: game on, baby,” he said in a statement.

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An initiative aimed at blocking the effects of the federal health care reform bill in Colorado is one step closer to making it on November’s ballot, Law Week Colorado reports.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled Monday that proposed initiative 45, which would prohibit state law from requiring people to buy health insurance, meets the state’s single subject requirement for ballot initiatives.

The court, in its 5-2 decision, also held that the proposed initiative’s title, “Right to health care choice,” is neither misleading nor an impermissible slogan.

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The House passed a bill Monday that seeks to delay the sale of Trinidad State Nursing home for about a year, The Pueblo Chieftain reports.

In the meantime, Las Animas County and the city of Trinidad intend to ask voters there to pass a sales tax in order to take over operation of the home.

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The case of a surgical technician exposing 6,000 patients in Colorado to Hepatitis C while feeding her drug addiction has prompted legislators to consider requiring surgical staff to register with the state, the Associated Press reports.

The House Health and Human Services Committee heard testimony Thursday on two bills designed to increase oversight of the medical staffers. The bills’ sponsors say more oversight could have prevented Kristen Diane Parker from injecting herself with painkillers and leaving behind the dirty needles to be reused on patients.

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By Debi Brazzale, COLORADO NEWS AGENCY

It may only be a couple of dollars, but House lawmakers Friday debated whether a surcharge on health insurance premiums and dental plans was an unconstitutional new tax or a benign step toward helping the families whose developmentally disabled children have catastrophic illnesses.

A catastrophic illness is defined as an illness or condition with expenses that exceed 10 percent of a families’ income, or 15 percent of family income over $100,000.

House Bill 1103, sponsored by Rep. Nancy Todd, D- Aurora, would place a $1 surcharge on health insurance policies and dental plans in Colorado , and monies would be directly deposited into the newly created Relief Fund for Children with a Catastrophic Medical Condition within the state treasury.  An estimated $2 million would be collected annually.

Todd acknowledges that the money raised by the fee would only cover approximately 10 percent of the need that currently exists, but she said moving forward with the measure is a needed gesture.

“This is one way we can support them when in so many other ways we cannot,” said Todd.

Republicans pushed back, arguing that the measure amounted to an unconstitutional tax under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, or TABOR, and said their opposition to the measure was based on constitutional questions, not the merits of the program, which they lauded. The GOP’s Spencer Swalm, of  Centennial, said the terms “fee” and “tax” are not interchangeable.

“This is a, quote, ‘fee’ that is being attached to insurance policies but has nothing to do with the administration of the policy,” said Swalm. “This is unconstitutional and a tax that should be put before the voters.”

Another GOP lawmaker, Rep. Jim Kerr, of Littleton, said that above and beyond the TABOR issues, the measure would create winners and losers because the overwhelming need for the families exceeds the abilities of the fund.

“How are we going to determine the winners and losers?  Who gets the Lotto–who doesn’t get the Lotto?” asked Kerr.

Rep. Diane Primavera, D-Broomfield, rejected Kerr’s argument that the measure should not be approved because it appears to pick winners and losers.

“I don’t support the philosophy that if you can’t help everyone you don’t help anybody,” said Primavera.

Addressing the limited funding, Republicans suggested that the amount available in the fund would increase if the measure also included state employees who have health and dental insurance plans–who are currently exempted from the surcharge according to legal sources consulted by the GOP members.

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By Peter Marcus, DENVER DAILY NEWS
Gov. Bill Ritter Tuesday issued an executive order creating an inter-agency task force and naming a director to implement components of federal health care reform backed by a Democrat-controlled Congress last month.
Colorado Republicans immediately criticized the governor for establishing the task force, arguing that the reform legislation is unconstitutional.
Republican Attorney General John Suthers has entered Colorado into a multi-state lawsuit seeking to exempt the state from health reform mandates. The lawsuit argues that Congress does not have the authority to regulate interstate commerce that would force consumers to carry health insurance.
Republican state lawmakers last month said they would also fight to exempt the state from a federal mandate requiring all citizens to buy insurance or pay a penalty.
And Jon Caldara, president of the libertarian Independence Institute, is pushing a 2010 ballot initiative that would exempt Coloradans from the federal mandate.
But Ritter, a Democrat, moved forward with implementing the reform effort on the state level. His executive order names Lorez Meinhold, Ritter’s health care policy expert, as director of national reform implementation for Colorado. The order also creates a new inter-agency implementation board, to be chaired by Joan Henneberry, executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing.
The 11-member board will make recommendations on how to implement the reform effort, which President Obama and fellow Democrats believe will extend health coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans. A key component of the legislation includes preventing insurance companies from denying coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions.
Ritter and Meinhold said one difficult implementation task for the state will be how to create a new high-risk insurance pool for Coloradans, as well as having insurance companies comply with mandates such as eliminating lifetime benefit caps.
“Colorado has never waited for Washington on health care reform, and we aren’t about to start waiting now,” Ritter said in a statement. “Because of our efforts the past few years, Colorado is better positioned than most states to make the most of national reform.”
Ritter signed the executive order Tuesday afternoon at Denver Health Medical Center. He also signed four pieces of state health reform legislation that aims at increasing the state’s health care workforce and assisting consumers in obtaining insurance policies that are easy to understand.
Republicans, however, used the opportunity to lash out at the governor and fellow Democrats for supporting the health reform effort. In a letter to Ritter, Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, R-Grand Junction, and Sen. Kevin Lundberg, R-Berthoud said instead of an executive order creating an implementation task force, Ritter should work with lawmakers on legislation rather than “simply imposing a framework unilaterally through fiat.”?“Health care reform is a complex and controversial issue,” the two state lawmakers wrote. “The public is entitled to more than an edict from the governor, an afternoon photo opportunity and a flashy press release.”

In other coverage:

The Denver Business Journal: Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signed an executive order Tuesday that will begin the process of ensuring the federal health-reform act is implemented in the state.
The executive order forms the Interagency Health Reform Implementing Board, which will be responsible for putting together a state health exchange as well as ensuring that private insurance companies in the state conform to new federal requirements. Republicans — who generally have opposed the health-reform measure recently passed by the Democratic majority in Congress and signed by President Barack Obama — wasted no time blasting Ritter’s order.

KDVR: Weeks after being treated at Denver Health for injuries sustained in a bicycle accident, Gov. Bill Ritter returned to the hospital to sign an executive order to speed up the implementation of federal health care reforms and to make sure those reforms mesh well with other measures already underway in the state. Ritter’s executive order names Lorez Meinhold, his health care policy expert, as a director of implementation and creates a new task force to figure out how to best put national reforms into practice in Colorado.

Pueblo Chieftain: Gov. Bill Ritter on Tuesday announced Colorado’s localized prescription for national health care. He said the state is on better footing that most to adapt to the changes because of Colorado’s efforts in recent years to expand health care coverage to residents. For Coloradans, Ritter said, health care reform on the national level will lower insurance premiums by as much as 25 percent, create up to 23,000 jobs in the medical and information-technology fields and open the door for better access to medical care for up to 500,000 people presently without insurance coverage.

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Gov. Bill Ritter will sign an executive order today that health care advocates say is key to turning the federal government’s vague framework for reform into reality in Colorado, The Denver Post reports.

The governor’s order will create a board of health-policy advisers to guide the transition to a new health system — everything from setting up a state insurance exchange to making sure the insurance commissioner has authority to guard against companies rejecting someone for being sick.

Ritter plans to sign the order, along with four new state laws intended to improve health care in Colorado, during a ceremony at the Wellington E. Webb Center For Primary Care in Denver, 301 W. Sixth Ave.

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A proposed state law that allows health insurance discounts for improvements such as losing weight or cutting cholesterol could lead to a system where co-workers with the same coverage pay different premiums based on their health, The Denver Post writes. “People respond to incentives,” said Rep. Joe Rice, a Littleton Democrat sponsoring the bill up for debate at the Capitol. Critics of the proposal are skeptical. “It sounds wonderful and I believe in wellness, but once again I’m cynical enough to assume it’s going to be in the best interest of insurance companies, ultimately,” said Sen. Joyce Foster, a Denver Democrat who was one of two senators who voted against the bill when it passed out of committee last week.

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Women with breast or cervical cancer who qualify for a certain Medicaid program can sign up the day of their diagnosis for the federal insurance that pays for their treatment — but only if they go to the right clinic, The Denver Post reports.

If, by chance, they happen to get diagnosed at a site not designated for Women’s Wellness Connection, they are not eligible. And they are blocked from ever enrolling during their cancer treatment.

“A woman’s treatment shouldn’t depend on what door she walked into to get diagnosed,” said state Rep. Dianne Primavera, a Broomfield Democrat and breast cancer survivor. Primavera and other advocates for cancer patients are pushing Colorado to change its rules

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Gil Romero

The Las Animas County commissioners have hired a former state representative to lobby on behalf of the Trinidad State Nursing Home, The Pueblo Chieftain reports. Gil Romero was chosen Monday to represent Las Animas County and the staff and residents at the nursing home by lobbying to keep it a state-run facility. Romero served in the House of Representatives from 1984 to 1998 and he served on the Joint Budget Committee.

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