208 Commission ideas await legislative action

DENVER – After more than a year of meetings and hearings held across the state, the Blue Ribbon Commission on Health Care Reform – also known as the 208 Commission for the bill that created it – presented its recommendations to the Colorado General Assembly in January.

But despite high expectations for improving the state’s health-care coverage – an estimated 792,000 residents lack insurance – not much came out of the 2008 legislative session.

The 208 Commission’s package of recommendations included requiring state residents to have minimum insurance coverage by expanding eligibility for public programs and providing sliding-scale subsidies for low-income workers to purchase private coverage.

But a lack of state revenue for anything too ambitious was one reason that significant health-care reform – something that would dramatically decrease the numbers of uninsured – did not occur. Republican legislators, insurance companies and business groups also criticized the 208 Commission recommendations as too sweeping and costly.

In the end, the recommendations mostly ended up on the shelf, awaiting a better moment to be reconsidered.

One bipartisan bill – Senate Bill 217 – emerged from the legislature and was signed by Gov. Bill Ritter in June. The bill called for the creation of a panel of experts to help fashion “value benefit plans” aimed at getting private insurance companies to come up with affordable minimum-coverage plans.

Mark Wallace, M.D., director of the Weld County Department of Public Health and Environment and a member of the 208 Commission, was one of 19 people appointed by Ritter to serve on the Centennial Care Choices Panel. The panel has until March 1 to issue a report to the legislature for possible action.

With a growing demand for affordable health care coverage, Wallace said he expects insurance companies will want to cooperate in developing plans that are less costly. “There is a fear that they may soon be regulated and they need to come to the table,” he said.

Wallace said he was disappointed by the amount of progress that has been made so far in the wake of the 208 Commission’s recommendations but hopeful that more will eventually occur.

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