As doubts continue to linger over the efficacy of Obamacare, Colorado voters will decide whether they want to create the nation’s first functioning single-payer system on Tuesday.
Formally named the “Colorado Creation of ColoradoCare System Initiative” (Amendment 69 for short), the constitutional amendment aims to replace current insurance regulations with a government program that pays for all healthcare costs.
According to CNBC’s Thursday report, the measure, if passed, would be funded through a 10 percent state and payroll tax. Employers would pay two-thirds of costs, and employees would pay the remaining third. The poor and/or unemployed, meanwhile, would be exempt from the tax while retaining coverage for hospitalization, prescription drug costs, and more.
Private insurance would also remain legal if Amendment 69 passes. But as Denverite notes, this would not exempt employed individuals and their employers from paying the tax–thus incentivizing people into using the system. The elected board which would run ColoradoCare would operate outside of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights, which imposes limits on the state budget. ColoradoCare, opponents argue, would double the state’s budget.
This is not the first time that single-payer has been proposed at the state and national level. Vermont tried to plan such a system in 2011, but it eventually ended in 2014 when Gov. Peter Shumlin said it was too costly to implement. And at the federal level, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has repeatedly introduced legislation that would provide ‘Medicare for all’ in Congress to no avail.
Coloradoans, according to polls, are increasingly skeptical. A Magellan Strategies poll from September indicated that support fell from 43 percent in January to 27 percent in August.
Opponents, ranging from business groups to politicians on both sides, say that this is because the plan is impractical.
Kelly Brough, president of the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce, told the Daily Sentinel in January that she would not “want to risk our access to quality health care, our income or our state’s economy” over the amendment.
And in a September interview with Denver’s local ABC affiliate, Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, said “that to throw all of [the Obamacare reforms] out and start over… would just be too destructive and too expensive.”
But supporters still hope for victory.
Owen Perkins, director of communications for ColoradoCareYES, noted in an October press release that “this is our chance to put people, patients, and providers first with a plan that prioritizes the health of our community over corporate profits…. We need a solution to the unsustainable status quo. A ‘YES’ vote on ColoradoCare is that solution.”
