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After watching a bill that would provide government-run universal health care get effectively killed earlier this month, Littleton Democrat Rep. Joe Rice is introducing a bill that he hopes will strike a compromise between opposing parties and will further the conversation on improved health care for Colorado.

The Comprehensive Health Care Reform Act would combine private and public insurance systems. Under House Bill 1358, the government would be in charge of covering preventive and catastrophic care, but Coloradans would be required to purchase individual insurance policies to cover everything else.

Rice told the Denver Daily News yesterday that including private insurers in the health care reform conversation would keep the price tag for the reform reasonable. According to the bill, there is enough money in the current health care system to fund the Comprehensive Health Care Reform Act.

“I think that without having some incentive to look at a plan that’s cheaper, there’s no incentive for cost control,” Rice said.

Health Care For All Colorado publicly spoke out against the bill yesterday, saying the bill would increase the reliance on for-profit insurance while increasing the cost of health care in Colorado. Rice called most of Health Care For All Colorado’s arguments wrong, saying that it’s “not an increased reliance on private health care, it’s decreased reliance on private health care.”  The lawmaker added that Health Care For All Colorado is opposing the bill because it’s not the government- run universal health care bill that the group desires.

However, the bill that would have provided government-run universal health care was laid over earlier this month until July and isn’t expected to pass.

“We tried single payer, we supported single payer, single payer didn’t work,” Rice said.

Health Care For All Colorado also argued that Colorado should not penalize those who do not purchase for-profit insurance, and that mandating the purchase of minimum benefits will increase the number of people in the state who are underinsured.

Meanwhile, supporters say that mandating health care for everyone would prevent the cost-shifting that occurs when all Coloradans pay for people who are uninsured and when providers raise rates due to reimbursement for services and inadequate Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates. 

Agreement possible?

According to Rice, both single payer and business community advocates came to an 85-percent agreement on health care reform this year, but talks broke down over the role of private insurance and “hotheads prevailed and they walked away.”

Rice said he is hoping to grow the center of support for health care reform by striking a compromise between the two groups. However, he knows it won’t be easy and is geared up for the contentious debate that is likely to begin when the bill is introduced in committee on Friday.

“The process going through this will likely prove my point; (single-payer advocates and the business community) can kill each other’s plans and say, ‘Yeah, we won, but, you know, we’re still stuck with the same messy system,” he said. 

Rice obviously hopes his plan succeeds, but if it doesn’t, he hopes both sides will decide, “Gosh, we each killed each other’s plans, we need to sit down again and come up with something again for next year.”

Rice said if the two sides continue to battle each other,  “then they can continue to fight each other for a very, very, very long time.”

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