Polis proposes health care pool for Colorado's local and state governments

BRECKENRIDGE — Gov. Jared Polis wants Colorado public employees — city, county, school district and state — to band together to lower their health care costs, he announced at a gathering of municipal officials Thursday.

“We would still be going through different insurance companies, but we would have better provider rates,” Polis told municipal officials from across the state who gathered at the Colorado Municipal League’s annual legislative workshop in Breckenridge.

What he wants to do is pool as many people together as possible, negotiate lower prices from providers (i.e. hospitals, doctors) and then bring those price lists to health insurance companies and ask for new — hopefully cheaper — plans using those rates. He envisions the new system being in place by 2021.

“Summit County is doing it now. Eagle County and La Plata County are exploring it, and then we are looking at using our statewide employee base of 30,000 as the core and reaching out to municipalities and school districts and other employers to join,” Polis told The Denver Post.

Read more: https://www.denverpost.com/2019/06/20/polis-proposes-health-care-pool-for-colorados-local-and-state-governments/