‘Let’s try for something better than this bill,’ Colorado political and health leaders say as GOP federal budget bill nears passage

As Republicans in the U.S. House continued to hammer out details of a budget bill, top state Democrats were joined on a virtual call Wednesday by health and business leaders who delivered a two-part message: the legislation spells deep trouble for Coloradans and the best idea is to put the brakes on.

“H.R. 1 (also called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act)  is not the right answer,” said Mitzi Moran, CEO of Sunrise Community Health. “Let's slow down, take time to evolve Medicaid and the health insurance exchange. Look for savings while ensuring the program's integrity. Let's try for something better than this bill.”

On the call were most of the state’s top Democrats, including Sen. John Hickenlooper, Gov. Jared Polis and Congressional Reps. Diana DeGette, Joe Neguse, Brittany Pettersen and Jason Crow.

They made the case that the bill, which amounts to the largest healthcare cuts in history, puts health care, food assistance and jobs on the chopping block. Hundreds of Coloradans, plus a variety of providers, will be directly impacted, they said.

That includes:

• Health coverage for more than 377,000 Coloradans
• Food assistance is at risk for at least tens of thousands of Coloradans
• A loss of $10 billion in federal funding for hospitals 
• At least six rural Colorado hospitals at risk of closure or service cuts

Many precise figures were unavailable because estimates change as various versions of the bill get changed in Congress.

The view from a community health center in northern Colorado

Republicans have said Americans support the trillions of dollars in tax cuts and vast expansion of funding for immigration enforcement. All four GOP members from Colorado voted for the bill when it first came up in the U.S. House, with all four Democrats voting no. Both Colorado’s senators, both Democrats, voted against it.

Moran painted a picture of dire consequences for the health care of thousands of people in northern Colorado, as well as the community health centers, clinics and hospitals that care for them.

Sunrise’s network of 14 clinics in Evans, Greeley and Loveland served 43,000 people last year, providing an array of services from primary and dental care to X-rays. 

“The vast majority of whom are struggling every day to make ends meet,” she said. “I can't underscore how important Medicaid and the health exchange is for our patients, for Sunrise and for our community.”

About half of Sunrise’s patients are enrolled in Medicaid. Colorado’s Medicaid program is called Health First Colorado; about 1.2 million people, about a fifth of the state’s population, rely on it.

She said the bill could cost 11,000 patients their coverage. And Moran noted before Medicaid expanded, after the launch in 2014 of the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, about half of Sunrise’s patients were uninsured and a quarter were covered by Medicaid. After the expansion, that flipped, so now half get insurance through it and just a quarter are uninsured. That mirrors significant drops in the state’s uninsured rate.

The view from a hospital in southwest Colorado

The picture looks much the same in southwest Colorado, the Four Corners region around Mesa Verde National Park.

Joe Theine, CEO of Southwest Health System in Cortez, said his 20-bed critical access hospital provides health care to 9,000 people in the area, with more than 13,500 urgent and emergency patients in 2024 and about 160 babies born annually at its family birthing center.

“Our hospital provides many other services that, if they were not available, people would have to travel hours to receive,” Theine said. “It includes things like outpatient rehabilitation, infusion therapy, surgery, and we're the primary ambulance transportation for most of the county here in southwest Colorado.”

But the hospital, just like Sunrise, just like facilities around the state, relies heavily on Medicaid. He said nearly a quarter of its funding comes from Medicaid, with $9 million coming from provider taxes hospitals pay.

The hospital is one of six Colorado facilities that made a list of those most vulnerable to cuts or even closure. 

“Cuts to the provider taxes and state-directed payments, along with other changes to the Medicaid program, puts at risk the services that we offer to people who live, work and travel throughout Southwest Colorado,” Theine said.

He thanked Rep. Jeff Hurd, the Republican who represents the district in which the hospital is located, for signing onto a recent letter raising concerns about Senate changes and highlighting  “the critical need to protect Medicaid and the hospitals that serve our communities.”

Hurd voted for the original House version of the bill and could play a key role in its ultimate outcome and language.

Another speaker spotlighted the broader economic impact of federal cuts, which will push tough decisions to states like Colorado, which can’t make up the shortfall.

“It will create more health care deserts in our state. This will also devastate our economy,” said Adam Fox, deputy director of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. He cited studies of the Medicaid expansion, noting Medicaid is an “economic multiplier for our state and across the country.”

For every dollar invested in Medicaid in Colorado, he said, it sees more than double in economic activity and benefit returned. “That means these cuts will have a huge ripple effect and severely harm our economy and it will hit rural areas where Medicaid is most important the hardest.”

Sharply divergent views of the budget bill

GOP Rep. Gabe Evans, who represents the 8th district, the state’s most competitive, has been saying for weeks that Medicaid can be streamlined without cuts to what he called “lawful beneficiaries.”

In an interview in April, Evans told CPR, “The expansion population, of course, they deserve coverage. But again, being good stewards of the taxpayer money means how do we make sure that our most vulnerable people…pregnant women, kids, people with disabilities, how do we make sure that they're getting their fair share of the pie?”

“The Big Beautiful Bill sent back to the House from the Senate is going to require significant changes in order to pass. I look forward to working with leadership and my colleagues to pass a bill consistent with the promises we made on the campaign trail,” said Hurd, in an email to CPR Tuesday from his chief of staff.

Hurd signed on to a letter to leadership in April that he and a group of other House Republicans couldn’t support a final bill that includes any reduction in “Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations.”

“When I was campaigning for Congress, one of the top issues was rural health care, and that's something that matters to me personally, but it's also important to the people of Colorado's third congressional district,” Hurd said in an interview with CPR News. 

Democrats on the call blasted the bill, portraying it as a massive transfer of wealth from the nation’s neediest to its best off. 

“It takes from the poor, it gives to the wealthiest. It really is a travesty of any kind of common sense,” said Hickenlooper.

Polis called it a “terrible” bill and called on Republicans to stop it.

“Start fresh with a better bill rather than adding trillions of dollars to the deficit, throwing hundreds of thousands of Coloradans off healthcare, raising healthcare rates for everybody else,” said Polis, who noted health care cut will end up costing all Coloradans in the form of higher insurance premiums.

Discussion of the impacts of the legislation brought Rep. Brittany Pettersen, from the 7th district, to tears at one point.

She spoke about her mother, who has struggled with opioid addiction, but has recovered thanks to the help of government programs like Medicaid.

“It's going to decimate our behavioral health system and the people who are struggling with addiction, who will no longer have the ability to get care and live in recovery like my mom,” Pettersen said. “So there's a lot at stake.”

The bill also hits financial safety nets and key food assistance programs for millions of Americans, including the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). It supports 55,000 Coloradans.

The majority of the households that would be affected by this bill are working families with children, seniors, veterans and people with disabilities, said Sue Ellen Rodwick, Western Slope Director of Food Bank of the Rockies. “With these high levels of food insecurity, food banks like ours cannot meet the increased need without vital federal assistance programs,” she said. 

Another health leader, who was not on the call, offered new numbers about the impact of the cuts on those who get insurance through the state’s marketplace.

Kevin Patterson, CEO of Connect for Health Colorado, said he believes that the bill passed by the Senate could result in the loss in health coverage of 86,000 customers on the marketplace, with the bulk of those happening because enhanced premium tax credits, which help make that coverage affordable, are allowed to expire.

He likened the changes to a tsunami, with the full devastation not readily apparent yet. People may see a wave receding only to be swamped later. 

“When it becomes real, then it's going to be, I think a lot of folks may be surprised,” he said, noting the marketplace would soon begin to alert its members of changes ahead.