Latest news with #DepartmentofHealthCarePolicyandFinancing
Yahoo
29-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Republicans defend spending bill, which could strip Medicaid from 200K Coloradans
Republican U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans of Fort Lupton, center, spoke about the GOP's budget bill in a press conference at the Colorado State Capitol on May 29, 2025. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline) Speaking over heckling chants from a nearby crowd of protesters, two of Colorado's top Republicans stood outside the state Capitol on Thursday, defending their party's sweeping federal budget bill in a press conference that leaned heavily on a series of misleading claims about Medicaid and immigration. U.S. Reps. Lauren Boebert of Windsor and Gabe Evans of Fort Lupton were among the 215 House Republicans who voted last week to approve the bill, which includes many of President Donald Trump's key domestic policy priorities. Despite deep cuts to social programs, headlined by the largest-ever reduction in Medicaid spending, the bill's tax cuts and new funding for the military and border security mean it would add an estimated $2.3 trillion to the federal deficit over 10 years. 'This is a victory for our values, for our communities and for our American way of life,' Boebert told reporters. 'It's about cutting wasteful spending — the waste, the fraud, the abuse, the illegal aliens who are receiving taxpayer benefits.' SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX 'We are protecting Medicaid for the people that need it most,' Evans said. 'We are removing 1.4 million illegal immigrants from the taxpayer-funded rolls of Medicaid.' Immigrants in the U.S. unlawfully are not eligible for federal Medicaid benefits. Republicans' budget bill would enact multibillion-dollar penalties for 14 states, including Colorado, that choose to cover some undocumented immigrants using state funds. But regardless of how states respond to those new rules, the vast majority of the funding cuts and insurance coverage losses projected to result from the bill will fall on citizens and lawful residents. Under a program that went into effect this year, income-eligible pregnant people and children can receive some benefits from Colorado's state-administered Medicaid program regardless of their immigration status. The state Department of Health Care Policy and Financing estimates the program will cover about 15,000 undocumented individuals in 2025, at a cost of $50.8 million. Those figures represent a small fraction of the annual loss of roughly $1 billion the state faces under the GOP bill's Medicaid changes, and of the 124,000 to 207,000 current enrollees who are projected to lose coverage, according to the nonprofit KFF. Most of the coverage losses would result from the bill's rollback of Biden-era rules aimed at streamlining enrollment and renewal, and enactment of new obstacles in the form of more frequent eligibility checks and work requirements for able-bodied adults without children. Many health care advocates say those new hurdles will tie up Medicaid programs in red tape and deny coverage to millions of eligible Americans. Nearly two-thirds of Medicaid recipients are already employed, and nearly all the rest are caregivers, students and people with disabilities. Studies have shown that state-level Medicaid work requirements, like one enacted in Arkansas, result in substantial losses of coverage and higher administrative costs, but no change in the rate of employment. 'Without Medicaid, people die,' Sara Loflin, executive director of the advocacy group ProgressNow Colorado, said in a statement Thursday. 'Evans wants voters to believe that the people who will lose coverage don't deserve health care, but thousands of Coloradans will fall through the cracks, and some of them will die as a result of Evans' vote.' Evans and Boebert were joined at Thursday's press conference by GOP state Sen. Byron Pelton of Sterling, Rep. Carlos Barron of Fort Lupton and Weld County Sheriff Steve Reams. The group spoke for about 45 minutes as a few dozen activists from ProgressNow and other left-leaning groups, separated from the press conference by a few yards and a loose cordon of Colorado State Patrol officers, shouted in protest — especially of Evans, the first-term representative from Colorado's battleground 8th Congressional District. Despite representing one of the nation's most evenly divided districts, Evans, a former state lawmaker who won his seat by fewer than 2,500 votes last year, has done little to distance himself from Trump or House Republican leadership during his first five months in Congress. Demonstrators chanted and held signs urging Evans to hold in-person town hall events to hear from his constituents, something he has so far refused to do. 'It's really unfortunate, as a mother of four boys and a grandmother, that I see more order in my home with children than I do with radical leftists,' Boebert said of the demonstrators. 'We want to have a conversation. We want to be able to answer questions, but the tolerant left doesn't seem very tolerant.' Evans, noting that projected Medicaid spending would still see year-over-year increases under the GOP plan, at one point claimed flatly that 'Medicaid is not being cut,' eliciting howls of derision from the protesters. At nearly 10% of total projected spending, the bill's $625 billion in total cuts to Medicaid spending over the next decade would be the largest reduction in the program's 50-year history. Nationwide, a total of 10.3 million people would lose access to Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Asked repeatedly how many of his constituents, nearly 1 in 3 of whom are enrolled in Medicaid, would become uninsured under the GOP plan, Evans did not answer, and instead twice recited the 'categories of people who lose coverage.' Statewide, Colorado Medicaid enrollment would shrink by between 11% and 18%, according to KFF. 'Do you not know the number?' asked a reporter. 'I'm telling you the number right now,' said Evans, who did not say a number. 'You may not like the answer, but that's the answer. Next question.' Republicans in the U.S. Senate are expected to pass their own budget reconciliation bill that differs significantly from the House's version, a process that could extend well into the summer. Alongside the Medicaid cuts, other key components of the bill include extensions of broad-based income and business tax cuts enacted during Trump's first term, and hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for border security, law enforcement and the military. Evans said claims that the bill amounted to 'taking from the poor and giving to the rich' were 'patently false.' But the benefits of the GOP plan's tax cuts are heavily skewed towards people with higher incomes: The top 1% of earners would see their after-tax incomes rise by over 4%, while incomes for the bottom 20% of earners would rise by just 0.6%, or an average of $90 a year, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The nonpartisan CBO found those meager tax savings for low-income people would be more than offset by the bill's cuts to Medicaid and other social programs, causing household resources for the lowest income decile to drop 4% by 2033 while rising for higher-income households. 'When you see your bill getting more and more unpopular as people learn the truth about it, you lie more,' said Wynn Howell, state director of the Colorado Working Families Party, after Thursday's press conference. 'When all you have is lies and scapegoats, you have a problem with your bill.' SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signs $44B state budget
Sen. Jeff Bridges speaks before Gov. Jared Polis signs the budget for the 2025-2026 fiscal year on April 28, 2025. (Sara Wilson/Colorado Newsline) Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed the state's $43.9 billion budget for the upcoming fiscal year on Monday, culminating nearly a year's worth of work to craft a spending plan that appropriately funds public education and Medicaid while cutting enough program spending to fill a billion-dollar gap. 'A lot of hours and time went into writing this document. This balanced, bipartisan budget holds strong reserves for an uncertain future. It makes smart investments to protect what matters most, including education, public safety and health care,' Polis said during a signing ceremony at the Governor's Residence in Denver. The budget includes about $16 billion in general fund spending, the portion of the budget over which the Legislature has the most control. The new fiscal year begins in July. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX The tight budget conditions were partially a product of ballooning Medicaid costs within the state's Department of Health Care Policy and Financing and slowing inflation, which impacts how much tax revenue the state is allowed to retain and spend under the state constitution. A cap set by the Taxpayer's Bill of Rights will increase by about 3.6% next year but will be outpaced by health care costs. That means the six bipartisan members of the powerful Joint Budget Committee had to figure out what to cut in order to create the constitutionally-required balanced budget. 'This is one of the most complicated budgets we have ever put together,' JBC Chair Sen. Jeff Bridges, an Arapahoe County Democrat, said. Over 60 companion bills ran alongside the primary budget bill, known colloquially as the 'long bill,' to shift spending and change state law to balance everything. Polis signed those last week. The budget makes spending reductions in about a dozen state departments. One move delays about $70 million this year and $56 million next year in planned transportation spending. Another eliminates about $7 million for the Revitalizing Main Street program and over $70 million in awarded, though not under contract, grants for small-scale infrastructure improvements. The budget also cuts or reduces many recently enacted programs, such as a Kidney Disease Task Force, free phone calls for incarcerated people, and a bullying-prevention effort in the Department of Education. There are also instances where the budget bumps funding, including $150 million more to public schools and $21.7 million to the Child Care Assistance Program. It includes a 2.5% across-the-board salary increase for state employees and a 1.6% increase in the state reimbursement for Medicaid providers. The budget funds the state's universal free school meal program, approved by voters in 2022, until the end of the year. After that, the program's financial future could be left to voters again if the Legislature refers to the fall ballot a measure asking to keep additional tax money to pay for the unexpected demand. Lawmakers expect the difficult budget circumstances to continue in the upcoming years. Some attribute that to the constitutional limit of how much tax revenue the state can keep, and others say it is a spending problem that leads to a structural issue. 'You don't get out of a structural deficit in a one-year budget. This is a two-, three- and four-year cycle that we have to work on and make sure that we are doing our due diligence,' said Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Weld County Republican. 'We had over $351 million of one-time spending again this year. That's not good,' she said. This year's budget constraints left little room for any new programs and legislation that included spending. The House voted 44-21 and the Senate voted 22-11 to approve the budget. The JBC's two Republican members joined Democrats to vote in favor. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
CBS News
28-03-2025
- Health
- CBS News
U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans seeks to stop identity theft of Medicaid and Medicare doctors
Republican Rep. Gabe Evans of Colorado is leading a bi-partisan effort to close a loophole in Medicare and Medicaid that he says is leading to identity theft. Evans introduced a bill that would require states to regularly check social security rolls for deceased physicians whose Medicaid or Medicare identification numbers are still being used to bill for services. Evans -- who has a son with serious medical problems -- says he wants to protect the federal health programs for those who need them most. "Preventing that identity theft from being weaponized in the Medicaid space by removing providers who have passed on from the system and taking that provider number out of system as a viable method to get payment," he said, "is step one in how we reduce these instances of what amounts to identity theft of a provider." He says the Government Accountability Office identified $54 billion in improper payments for Medicare and another $31 billion for Medicaid last year. A recent audit also found problems at the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, which oversees Medicaid. The problems include missing eligibility documentation and incorrect procedure codes in billing. The department says most of the problems had no financial impact and affected only a small percentage of the claims processed. It released a statement saying, "The Department of Health Care Policy and Financing is committed to ensuring responsible use of taxpayer dollars to get Coloradans the care they qualify for and need to thrive, and we continue to implement changes and improvements to ensure this." Evans' bill comes as the U.S. Senate considers a measure that would require the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- which Evans sits on -- to cut $880 billion in spending . Medicaid is the largest program the committee oversees. Colorado's Department of Health Care Policy and Financing says those cuts could result in hundreds of thousands of Coloradans losing coverage.
CBS News
26-02-2025
- Business
- CBS News
As Colorado budget shortfall grows, a state senator questions $4 million in spending on new furniture
The hole in the Colorado state budget is getting bigger. The latest figures show a shortfall of about $1.2 billion, and the state's chief economist says the reserve -- or rainy-day fund -- will run out of money by 2029 if nothing changes. "The message is we are on an unsustainable path with our budget if we don't change our spending habits," said State Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, who is one of six lawmakers on the Joint Budget Committee. The Republican says lawmakers have simply overspent, pointing out the state has added more than 7,000 full time employees and 17 new state offices in the last six years alone. But the biggest budget driver is Medicaid. It makes up a third of the general fund and has ballooned by nearly $600 million in the last year. The Department of Health Care Policy and Financing says the increase is due largely to utilization by older Coloradans and people with disabilities, who make up only 9% of the Medicaid population but account for 50% of the costs. Colorado has the second fastest growing population of people over age 65 -- they outnumber those under 18 -- and long-term care is covered by Medicaid, not Medicare. State Sen. Jeff Bridges -- chair of the budget committee -- says the state is generating enough revenue to cover expenses but lawmakers can't tap all the money. He says the problem isn't spending, rather it's the Taxpayer Bill of Rights -- or TABOR -- which caps how much the state can spend to the growth in population plus inflation. "Inflation is the price of dishwashers and washing machines and that's not what we buy as state. We pay wages. We invest in health care and those costs grow way faster," the Democrat said. Bridges says the budget committee is also limited in where it can trim expenditures. In addition to Medicaid, K-12 education accounts for another third of the general fund while the other 40% is divided among higher education, human services, corrections and judicial. "Where are we going to cut? Show me where all these savings are because there's not a billion dollars worth of savings to be had in this budget," he said. As the budget writers search for where to cut, Kirkmeyer found a surprise in the legislature's own budget -- about $20 million in unspent general fund allocations from previous years. The money has been deposited in a cash fund used primarily for renovations at the capitol. There are nearly a thousand cash funds in various departments throughout the state. Kirkmeyer says the budget committee needs a full accounting of those funds. "So what we need to do is sunset the cash funds. Fund them for a half year and tell each of those departments to come back to us and say what's in those cash funds, what are those cash funds used for? What's the fund balance? How much are we spending and where did it come from. Is it fee generated revenue? Did we transfer general fund into there?" Kirkmeyer said. The legislature's cash fund was approved by lawmakers more than a decade ago. State House Speaker Julie McCluskie says they are planning to return more than $4 million from the cash fund to the general fund. She says the legislature's executive committee -- made up of leadership from both parties -- decides how to spend the money and it's also cutting the legislature's overall budget by 5%, including eliminating all interim committees this year. Kirkmeyer says she'd like to see all $20 million in the cash fund returned. But McCluskie says they need the money to move lawmakers' offices into the capitol. Many are in other buildings right now that she says aren't as easily accessible to the public. They are also moving about 200 legislative staff from the capitol to another building that she says needs big renovations, including an estimated $4 million in furniture alone. Meanwhile, Kirkmeyer says, Gov. Jared Polis is proposing cutting child welfare funding by $3 million. "It's clear to me they have a crisis of priorities. They value furniture over neglected and abused kids," she said.
