The Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform was created last year by General Assembly, and was assigned the tough task of seeking solutions to the rising cost of health care in Colorado and the ever increasing number of people in Colorado without health insurance – currently about 780,000 people.
In the last few months, there have been numerous proposals submitted to the commission from various groups across the state. The commission is supposed to complete it’s review in January 2008, at which time the chosen proposals would be submitted to lawmakers for possible legislation.
But the state’s efforts to reform health care took a blow on Wednesday when Bill Lindsay, the chairman of the commission and president of the benefit group of the worlds largest privately held insurance broker, said the group is underfunded and simply does not have the time or resources to complete the task of fixing Colorado’s health care system this year.
Lindsay said this commission will be the start of a journey that Colorado will have to make, and that expecting the problems to be solved in such a short time frame and with such a small budget it unrealistic. Colorado allocated $100,000 to the commission to fund their work, but Lindsay pointed out that other states doing similar studies into health care reform have spent more than $1million on the project, making Colorado’s sum seem paltry.
