{"id":48233,"date":"2021-03-03T18:09:57","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T01:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/nonprofit-launches-1m-ad-buy-against-dems-insurance-proposal\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:42:02","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:42:02","slug":"nonprofit-launches-1m-ad-buy-against-dems-insurance-proposal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/nonprofit-launches-1m-ad-buy-against-dems-insurance-proposal\/","title":{"rendered":"Nonprofit launches $1M ad buy against Dems\u2019 insurance proposal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"State
State Sen. Kerry Donovan, D-Vail, announces the introduction of a public health insurance option in Colorado at the state Capitol on March 5.<\/span>Jesse Paul\/The Colorado Sun<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A deep-pocketed nonprofit backed by private insurance companies has launched a<\/p>\n

Partnership for America\u2019s Health Care Future launched a TV ad buy at a cost of nearly $1 million on Monday that will run through early April. The ads are airing in the Denver, Grand Junction and Colorado Springs television markets.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just the beginning of the group\u2019s full-court press against a bill that still hasn\u2019t been introduced.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit and its subsidiary, Colorado\u2019s Health Care Future, also fought against the proposal last year before it was shelved because of coronavirus and political headwinds. In fiscal year 2020, which spanned from July 2019 and June 2020, the nonprofit group spent $4.8 million on advertising and consulting in opposition to the bill. It also spent $236,000 on direct lobbying against the measure during that period.<\/p>\n

And the organization is already the top-spending lobbying client in Colorado from July 2020 through the end of January, having spent $203,500. The group\u2019s lobbying firm, Forbes Tate Partners of Washington, D.C., reports pouring another $156,000 in those seven months, mostly on consulting around the public option proposal.<\/p>\n

Partnership for America\u2019s Health Care Future began in 2018 and also is spending to campaign against federal health care initiatives such as Medicare for All. The group\u2019s members include the American Hospital Association, Colorado Business Roundtable, Farm Bureau of Colorado, Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and a variety of private health insurance carriers.<\/p>\n

Colorado Healthcare Future spokesman Tyler Mounsey criticized the prospective legislation. The group cites studies that a public health care option would harm communities of color and would harm hospital financial health, especially for rural hospitals. \u201cIt is disappointing that lawmakers are willing to check-the-box instead of providing answers to important questions about the impacts of the bill and respond to concerns raised by vested stakeholders,\u201d Mounsey said in a written statement.<\/p>\n

Sen. Kerry Donovan, a Vail Democrat championing the public option, decried the big spending by opponents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re spending $1 million, you must be protecting a profit much bigger than $1 million,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is big corporate money pulling together resources to try to defeat a bill they haven\u2019t read yet. They don\u2019t even know what they are fighting, so they must be protecting their bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n

The spending The Sun identified doesn\u2019t include digital ads being run by Partnership for America\u2019s Health Care Future. The group\u2019s ads started showing up on digital games over the weekend and they have also purchased sponsorship slots on The Sun\u2019s website and in its politics newsletter.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s lobbying regulations mean the group will eventually have to report what it\u2019s paying for all types of advertising.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit Colorado Consumer Health Initiative is leading support for the public option. It spent about $61,000 to lobby in fiscal year 2020 and has spent nearly $31,000 so far this fiscal year on pushing for the legislation\u2019s passage. Adam Fox, the group\u2019s deputy director, said the $1 million ad buy is about the same as the initiative\u2019s annual budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will be running some paid media,\u201d Fox said, adding, \u201cthere is simply no way financially that we are going to compete with what they are spending on this proposal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox said one study indicated one in five Coloradans struggled to pay for health care, and that was before the pandemic. His group will work to amplify the voices of consumers.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the day, when we\u2019re up against a very well-financed powerful industry, the only way we can really fight back is through people power and stories of the people affected,\u201d Fox said.<\/p>\n

Another recent study indicated profits for Colorado\u2019s hospitals are among the highest in the nation.<\/p>\n

State Rep. Dylan Roberts, an Avon Democrat also championing the bill to create a public health insurance option, says the measure will be introduced \u201cin just a few weeks.\u201d And he noted the measure will be different than the one debated last year, before the coronavirus sent lawmakers on a two-month hiatus.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re going to be proposing is a two-phase approach, where plan-year 2023 and continuing into plan-year 2024 the bill will set a goal for premium reductions,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n

Since not all insurance coverage begins at the start of the calendar year, it can be referred to as a plan year.<\/p>\n

A draft of the legislation, first obtained by Colorado Politics, shows that lawmakers want insurance carriers in the 2023 plan year to offer a standardized plan premium that is at least 10% less than the premium rate they offered in 2021 on the individual market. By the 2024 plan year, that reduction must jump to 20%.<\/p>\n

Hospitals, insurance companies and pharmaceutical interests \u201cget to determine amongst themselves, without mandates from the state, how to achieve those goals.\u201d<\/p>\n

If they can reach an agreement that will sufficiently drive down premium costs, then the deal will continue in perpetuity with an increase from the previous year of no more than the consumer price index plus 1%.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they cannot achieve the goals, then we move to Phase 2, where the state of Colorado, through a nonprofit entity, would offer a Colorado option,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n

Another circumstance that could trigger the public option being offered under the draft legislation is if at least two carriers aren\u2019t offering insurance plans in each ZIP code in the state for plan year 2024.<\/p>\n

The public option, under the draft bill, would be run through a nonprofit set up by the state, making it quasi-governmental. Last year\u2019s version of the proposal called for the plan to be dictated by the state but offered through private insurance carriers.<\/p>\n

If Republicans manage to gain control of the General Assembly while insurance companies, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are trying to drive down premium costs, they could try to repeal the law.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would need to pass a bill to overturn it,\u201d Roberts said. \u201cI suppose that\u2019s a reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just a draft,\u201d Roberts cautioned, explaining that it could change based on stakeholder input.<\/p>\n

Roberts warned his constituents about the company ad blitz in an email blast last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour airwaves, mailboxes, and computer screens are about to be bombarded by a multimillion dollar ad campaign seeking to spread misinformation about this bill,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThey will rely on made-up data and \u2018facts\u2019 that have nothing to do with this year\u2019s bill in order to distract you from what is actually going on. Don\u2019t fall for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The public option legislation is one of the top priorities at the Capitol this year for Democratic Gov. Jared Polis. The measure is expected to be one of the most fiercely debated bills of the 2021 lawmaking term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

nearly $5 million in 2020 to attack a similar measure<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":48234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[394,233,28,265],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-48233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-colorado-legislature","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-headlines","tag-politics"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87332,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48233\/revisions\/87332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48233"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=48233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}