Critics of HR 1 warned in a Zoom call Thursday that its impacts to patients and hospitals in rural Colorado will be enormous.
The call was organized by the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, a nonprofit.
HR 1, a sweeping bill that cut about $1 trillion from Medicaid and subsidies for health insurance, was passed about a year ago.
U.S. Rep. Jason Crowe of Colorado’s 6th congressional district said not a week goes by that he doesn’t meet with families who say their health-insurance premiums have gone from $300 to $1,500 a month so they can no longer afford the insurance. He said people are having to decide between paying for prescriptions or a roof over their heads.
“It’s threatening the lives of these folks,” Crowe said, “all because of the cruelness of this bill that was passed in the middle of the night last year without hearings, with no mark-up.”
Rural Americans are most impacted by the bill, Crowe said, because it is triggering the closure of hospitals and clinics and causing providers to go out of business.
Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper said, “Now, by any measure, we are in a full-blown health-care emergency.”
He said the bill will put unbelievable pressure on already-struggling hospitals. Forty-four rural hospitals nationwide have closed since 2020, the online newspaper The Conversation reports.
The CEO of Montezuma County’s Southwest Health System, Joe Theine, has said that by 2033 SHS will receive an estimated $9.6 million less per year because of the bill.
Across the country, 50 percent of all rural hospitals are operating on a negative margin, Kevin Stansbury, CEO of Lincoln Health, said. Lincoln Health is an independent critical-access hospital in Hugo on the eastern plains of Colorado.
“You can only do that so long,” Stansbury said.
HR 1, he said, “is going to have a significant impact on us. We tend to run with 30 to 40 days cash on hand. I don’t have the kind of reserves to keep going.”
Lincoln Health serves clients across thousands of square miles, Stansbury said, and if it should disappear, “The local rancher who suffers a heart attack loses access to timely care.”
He added, “Where you live should not determine IF you live.”
Hospitals are also “economic engines,” Stansbury said. “We employ about 160 people in a community of 800.”
Donna Lynne, CEO of Denver Health, said the most devastating cuts will come in 2028, when the rates paid to providers for taking care of Medicaid patients will be drastically reduced. Lynne said Denver Health does not have enough commercial patients to offset that reduction.
Many hospitals are operating on profit margins of one or two percent, she said. “God forbid if we have something like Covid.”
The CEO of Pueblo Community Health Center, Donald Moore, said the administrative requirements imposed under HR 1, such as Medicaid patients having to renew their eligibility twice a year instead of once, will be costly. In the next fiscal year, his health center will have to spend $5.6 million just to comply with the administrative rules, he said.
Lynne said Denver Health will be adding 15 new staff to manage the work requirements and other aspects of HR 1.
“That’s money that is absolutely wasted,” Lynne said.
U.S. Rep. Brittany Pettersen of Colorado’s 7th District said HR 1 was “the most disastrous bill for working families in the history of this country.”
“Rural hospitals are at the brink of whether they are going to be able to keep their doors open,” she said.
Her own parents, Pettersen said, choking up, are Medicaid clients and “wouldn’t be alive today without access to critical care that they need.”
Forty percent of pregnant women rely on Medicaid, she said.
The participants in the call said universal health care is needed and called on Congress to either repeal or delay the implementation of some of the measures in HR 1.
Otherwise, Hickenlooper said, nearly a quarter of a million Coloradoans will lose their health insurance over the next ten years.
“The bottom line is, Coloradoans are going to have a harder and harder time going to the doctor,” Hickenlooper said.
“Coloradoans are going to die based on the enormity of these cuts.”
