America’s health system is breaking down and health costs are increasing more than five times the earnings increase for Colorado workers. HSAs were introduced in 2004 as a way to cut down on over-utilization, but they aren’t gaining wide acceptance, they don’t really help the problem anyway, and they won’t work. But there is a more progressive political landscape in Colorado now and it appears the health care crisis is actually going to get the attention it deserves.
Gov.-elect Bill Ritter said today he believes he can keep his promise to provide health insurance to 760,000 Coloradans who don’t have coverage by the end of this decade.
“What we believe is achievable is that we have in place a plan by 2010 that I’ll call now the Colorado Health Plan that provides some level of access to primary care through health insurance for all the citizens of Colorado,” Ritter said.
But Ritter’s idea is even coming under criticism from many other democrats in Colorado, who are calling it a budget buster. But legislators, lobbyists, and activists from Mass., who have created the nation’s first potentially viable universal health care program, will be coming to Colorado to help our lawmakers get the math to work. I hope the ideas Ritter has come up with on his own already have more cost control mechanisms built into them than the Mass universal health care plan, because even the most level headed health care experts see the Mass plan as a failure waiting to happen.
