The Colorado health exchange costs federal taxpayers $1,427 per enrollee
A May 2014, report from the law firm Mehri & Skalet estimates that the Colorado health exchange is costing federal taxpayers $1,427 per enrollee. That was before its director, Patty Fontneau, got the $14,000 bonus, and a 2.5 percent salary bump that raised her salary to $195,314 a year and sweetened an already generous retirement […]
Amendment 66: More Spending Doesn’t Buy Higher Student Achievement
Parents spend their money to benefit their children. School bureaucrats spend other people’s money to benefit the schools and those who run them. Amendment 66 raises taxes to take money from working Coloradans. It gives the broken public school bureaucracy more to spend and leaves parents with less. Taking money from parents harms children.
Amendment 66: Spend More, Get Less (Part 2)
More spending does not create better schools. Many well-funded districts have lower graduation rates. Colorado Springs spent $1,500 less than Denver. It graduated 76 percent of its students, while Denver only graduated 46 percent. If passing Amendment 66 lets Denver spend $4,000 more, it might end up matching Indianapolis’s 30 percent graduation rate.
Amendment 66: Spend More, Get Less
IB-G-2013 (October 2013) Author: Linda Gorman PDF of full Issue Backgrounder Introduction: Amendment 66 will take the money you spend to benefit your children and give it to public education bureaucrats. Education bureaucrats do not necessarily use higher funding to benefit children. They will spend it on things that they like – generous pensions, higher […]
A Billion Dollars Worth of Bad Ideas: Amendment 66 Tax Hike
Amendment 66 would replace Colorado’s flat income tax of 4.63 percent of federal adjusted gross income with the two bracket system shown in Table 1: Colorado Income Tax Rates if Amendment 66 Passes. Passing Amendment 66 also passes SB13-213, the new 141-page state school finance law.
Will increasing Colorado’s top income tax bracket by 27 percent affect incomes?
At present, everyone in Colorado pays the same marginal income tax rate, 4.63 cents out of every additional taxable dollar earned. Colorado officials and their allied interest groups support a constitutional amendment both to increase the state’s income tax and to create two tax brackets. They say the additional funding will improve K-12 education, although […]
A Thumbnail Guide to Colorado State Government’s Spending Problem
Colorado state government has a spending problem. Although inflation-adjusted per capita personal income in Colorado is still below its 2003 level, state spending has risen every year since 1999. State tax revenue has risen, but it cannot keep up with the spending.
Colorado Medicaid expansion would make 86,000 college students eligible
by Linda Gorman Gov. John Hickenlooper wants yet another expansion of Colorado Medicaid. This one will cover the more than 86,000 college students in Colorado that the Census Bureau estimates have incomes below the federal poverty level. It also will cover the unknown number of otherwise healthy single students above the poverty level who have […]
Medicaid expansion has hidden costs
by Linda Gorman The federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) has radically restructured federal subsidy programs for medical care. For the first time in decades, Colorado can begin bringing state expenditures in line with tax revenues by using federal money to reverse the excessive growth in its Medicaid and child health insurance programs. […]
Post: “Health care battle has plenty of fight left, Denver panel shows”
Denver Post: “[Linda] Gorman of the Independence Institute said the subsidies and patient-managing plans of “Obamacare” wipe consumer choice out of the picture.” Continue reading
The Real Cost of ObamaCare
Having someone else pay for your medical care is the most expensive way to pay for it because it adds insurer overhead costs to the cost of the actual service. Colorado’s private sector began switching to consumer directed health policies (CDHPs) when they became more widely available in 2003. CDHPs encourage cash pay- ment for inexpensive and predictable care. Health savings accounts (HSA) qualified plans save excess funds in tax-free accounts that accumulate until retirement.
Medicaid Block Grants and Medicaid Performance
Governments at all levels are facing severe fiscal stress, and Medicaid is the largest and fastest growing publicly-funded health program in the United States. State and federal authorities have had little success in controlling Medicaid expenditures with conventional reforms, and changing it from an entitlement program to a block grant program is now under discussion. This Issue Paper explores how transforming Medicaid into a block grant program offers the promise of improving patient care and restraining the growth in program costs.
