Citizens of the Centennial State are poised to make a historic vote that could impact the next 100 years:
Colorado voters could be asked to weigh in on a far-reaching, first-in-the-nation plan to scrap ObamaCare and replace it with a single-payer-style health care system. A single-payer system is one where a single agency administers health care fees and costs, while medical care itself is handled by the private sector. Vermont leaders backed off a similar plan a year ago, but activists in Colorado are pushing their own version in the form of a November 2016 ballot question. Supporters appear poised to get that question on the ballot. According to The Denver Post, supporters turned in more than 156,000 signatures for the measure, well over the 98,492 needed. As a last step, the signatures will still need to be verified.
The program would be called “ColoradoCare” and would cost billions to run.
The program, called ColoradoCare, comes with a steep price tag: $25 billion, which would be raised with a 10 percent payroll tax increase. At the same time, the plan would provide all residents with Medicare-style health care coverage and allow the state to dump Obamacare.Whether Colorado voters would agree to take on that kind of tax hike is another question — two years ago, they rejected a comparatively paltry $1 billion tax increase for education — but there is no doubt that the “no-more-Obamacare” argument resonates with certain segments of the population.
With Obamacare Coops dropping like flies, and taxpayers unhappy with “responsibility payments” to the IRS for not having health insurance, it is no wonder Americans are mulling over non-Obamacare options.
In fact, the stench from the decay of Obamacare is such that the White House is launching a sign-up competition:
As open enrollment season on HealthCare.gov begins, President Obama is introducing a contest meant to motivate Americans to sign up for health insurance coverage through federal and state exchanges.”I want to see how many of your neighbors you can get signed up,” the president said in a video released Saturday. “I’ll come visit the city that enrolls the highest percentage of folks who aren’t covered right now. That’s a promise.”
I assert that Obama would get more takers if he promised not to visit a city.
Weren’t there suppose to be “Obamacare Navigators”, who would help Americans obtain the insurance they need, so that the program would be a raging succes and people would be clammoring to sign up? What happened to those employees?
They are now enjoying FUNemployment.
Get Covered Illinois said Friday that it will dole out about $5 million in federal grants to 10 community groups to hire the counselors, known in federal language as navigators. A year ago the organization spent about $25.8 million on the navigator program.The cutback in the enrollment specialists concerns health care advocates because consumers have struggled to pick a health plan among a dizzying array of choices with many subtle differences. Navigators also help people find out whether they qualify for tax subsidies to help lower the cost of coverage.
It has long been suspected that Obamacare was designed to collapse so that a single payer healthcare system would actully be appealing to Americans. Its failure has been of Titanic proportions, indeed.
It will be fascinating to see of Colorado’s voters choose to stay on the course to a single-payer system, in which the people are the budget and quality is secondary to supporting the bureaucracy.
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