The writing’s not just on the walls of the state Capitol again; it’s all over the state budgets for the past few years and in a Sentinel editorial from this same time last year.
Colorado cannot afford the extraordinary cost of Medicare in the state.
That was the message Gov. Jared Polis delivered this same time last year as he unveiled his 2026 draft budget request for the state legislature, a ritual dictated by state law.
Medicaid and other healthcare costs to the state have only risen since then as the program consumes an astounding 40% of the state budget and drains away between $14 billion and $16 billion a year, mushrooming each year at an approximate 15% clip.
He repeated his warning this week, pointing out that state Medicaid spending “is not sustainable.”
As an almost “best case” scenario, Polis this week in his draft budget proposed reducing the projected increased cost to about 4% over what it spent last year, raising alarms from some of the public and lawmakers that he was actually cutting Medicaid spending.
“This is by no means a cut in Medicaid spending,” Polis told the Sentinel Monday in reviewing the proposed budget. “It’s actually increasing it.”
Indeed it is. Polis is proposing that Colorado spend about $250 million more on programs than the state did last year. But at the same time, he’s asking state lawmakers to cut back proposed increases by about $300 million.
It isn’t that Colorado, and the nation, don’t need a healthcare system available to everyone, it’s just that Colorado taxpayers can’t foot the bill alone.
The Medicaid funding crisis has only been made worse by damage inflicted by President Donald Trump, Republicans and the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which not only cut federal funding that goes toward reimbursing Colorado for the costs of the federal program, but also made cruel and disastrous cuts to helping fund the state’s insurance exchange, a lifeline for the working poor.
All of this has then been compounded by intractable inflation, chiefly powered by Trump’s nefarious tariffs and his disastrous war in Iran.
“According to health policy organization KFF, national Medicaid spending per enrollee increased by approximately 26 percent between 2019 and 2024, while Colorado’s spending per enrollee increased by nearly 39 percent,” Polis said in his budget message to state lawmakers.
The end result is spiraling healthcare costs for everyone in Colorado and exorbitant and increasingly unaffordable private insurance rates.
It’s a spiral down that is absolutely dragging Colorado toward disaster.
The wild increase in Medicaid spending has been good news for the hardworking families who can pay their rent or mortgages and see a doctor with medical issues before they become an issue for the emergency room. It’s good news for all of Colorado that, in theory, we all pay less for health insurance because hospitals provide less healthcare without being compensated.
But it’s bad news for Colorado taxpayers because the cost of Medicaid expansions and the increasing lack of federal support for the program means we will all pay more for less health care, no matter where we get it from.
Polis is right, again this year. The Medicaid system must be reeled in to protect the state’s ability to fund schools, roads and public safety.
It’s a completely avoidable quagmire, but not under the current political leadership in Washington.
This is a federal issue and problem, inflicted on states like Colorado that understand that your survivability shouldn’t be tied to your W2.
The U.S. spends twice as much on healthcare as other wealthy nations — $10,966 per person annually, compared with $5,697 in comparable countries, according to repeated and verified research. Yet American life expectancy lags behind, and our infant mortality is higher. Our fragmented, for-profit health insurance industry drains billions of dollars every year in administrative waste and profit margins while leaving millions uninsured and tens of millions under-insured.
And for those who scoff at systems like the ones in Canada and Germany, saying that such universal healthcare systems mean patients must wait for care, call your doctor and ask how long the wait is for an annual physical exam or any care that isn’t linked to a medical emergency.
States like Colorado that expanded Medicaid have dramatically reduced preventable deaths and hospital bankruptcies. Yet these same states now face fiscal cliffs because they are shouldering what should be the federal government’s responsibility.
Universal healthcare is not a radical idea. It’s a moral and economic necessity, and it’s the successful norm across the developed world. Every other G7 nation guarantees it: Canada, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, and the UK. Only the United States refuses to join them. The result? Higher costs, poorer outcomes, and an economy weighed down by medical debt and job insecurity.
A bevy of ballot proposals and a new governor in January will decide how the Medicaid crisis spills out and gets addressed.
Colorado must drastically reel in Medicaid costs and everyone must push a new Congress and the Trump White House for real change: universal healthcare.
