By: Colorado School of Public Health
Authors: Beth McManus ScD, Jack Pattee PhD, Natalie J Murphy MPH, Kelsey Phinney, Colin
Hensen, Elizabeth Boggs MD, and Gregory J Tung MPH PhD
Published: May 28th, 2021
Financed by: Colorado Department of Health Care Policy & Financing
Legislation analyzed: The Health Cost Analysis Task Force is the legislatively appointed body charged with selecting a nonpartisan, unbiased vendor to perform an analysis pursuant to House Bill 19-1176.
Download the Report: from the Colorado Healthcare task force, or from our backup files below.
Author's Summary
The Colorado legislature established the Health Care Cost Savings Act of 2019 (HB19-1176) to create a Task Force charged with, among other responsibilities, selecting and working closely with an analytic team to examine alternative approaches to health care financing. The analytic team was tasked with providing a detailed analysis of costs and other impacts of three systems to inform future policy decision making: (a) the current Colorado health care financing system in which residents receive health care coverage from private insurers and public programs or are uninsured; (b) a multi-payer universal health care system in which all residents of Colorado are covered, regardless of immigration or documentation status, under a plan with a mandated set of benefits that is publicly and privately funded and also paid for by employer and employee contributions; and (c) a publicly financed and privately delivered option that provides universal coverage again, regardless of immigration or documentation status. The Colorado School of Public Health (CSPH) was chosen as the analytic team to conduct this health care reform cost analysis. Guided by HB19-1176, CSPH engaged in two core activities related to the three healthcare reform policy options: 1) summarizing the scientific literature on a range of topics outlined by HB19-1176 and deemed important by the Task Force and 2) modeling
costs.