Alternative Headline: Colorado Faces Medicaid, SNAP Cuts
[MM Curator Summary]: Colorado Democrats are preparing for steep Medicaid and SNAP cuts following a new federal tax and spending law backed by congressional Republicans.
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The immediate question Colorado lawmakers face in the wake of congressional Republicans’ tax break and spending cut law is how to fix the billion-dollar state budget shortfall the new law caused. But once they do that, longer-term impacts of the federal law — including Medicaid work requirements and food assistance cost burden shifts — will still loom large, health experts and economists warned top state Democrats on Thursday.
The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing estimates that those federal changes, some of which won’t take effect until 2027, will put 377,000 Coloradans at risk of Medicaid disenrollment and add significant administrative costs to the state.
The law, which was signed by President Donald Trump on July 4, cuts more than $1 trillion nationwide from Medicaid, a state-federal health insurance program for people with low incomes.
All four Republican members of the Colorado delegation to the U.S. House voted in favor of the law. All four Democrats, as well as Colorado’s two Democratic U.S. senators, voted against it.
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The law’s reduction in health care premium tax credits for Affordable Care Act insurance enrollees will mean premium increases of 50% to 150% or more for nearly 300,000 Coloradans, said Adam Fox, the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative’s deputy director.
“The reconciliation law is dramatically and rapidly diminishing affordability of health insurance,” Fox said during a presentation to the state House and Senate Democratic caucuses at the Capitol in Denver. The tax and spending law was passed in Congress through a reconciliation process.
The presentation came a day after members of the Executive Committee of the Legislative Council met at the Capitol to discuss the estimated $1.2 billion tax revenue hit to the state that follows the law’s passage.
More than a dozen Democratic state lawmakers, including Senate President James Coleman and House Speaker Julie McCluskie, attended the presentation Thursday. Democrats have strong majorities in the state House and Senate.
The reconciliation law is dramatically and rapidly diminishing affordability of health insurance.
– Adam Fox, Colorado Consumer Health Initiative’s deputy director
Gabriela Walters, the director of quality, risk and compliance at Tepeyac Community Health Center in Denver, said the nonprofit served 7,500 patients last year, about a third of whom rely on Medicare and another 55% of whom have no health insurance. She said that the new law will “negatively impact our financial stability and sustainability.”
“We believe that the results of many of our patients who are on Medicaid losing coverage (is that it) will make them less likely to seek preventive and primary care and more likely to delay care until concerns are more severe, which will ultimately lead to sicker patients and sicker communities,” Walters said.
Presenters pointed to cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also made under the new federal law, as damaging to the health and food security of low-income Coloradans.
The law changes SNAP by broadening work requirements, penalizing states with higher error rates of under- or over-payments, and, for the first time, requiring states to share some of the costs of providing SNAP benefits.
Ron Meehan, the government relations manager at Feeding Colorado, said about 36,000 Coloradans are at risk of losing SNAP benefits, adding that this will increase the burden on food banks.
“The overarching message is that Colorado’s anti-hunger network is going to be expected to do a lot more with a lot less,” he said.
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https://coloradonewsline.com/2025/07/31/health-care-access-food-colorado/
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