By John Ingold | Colorado Sun
There are now only seven days left in Colorado’s legislative session. But lawmakers and other state officials have for weeks been bracing for the possibility of coming back to the Capitol later this year to deal with potential federal cuts to Medicaid likely to be included in Congressional Republicans’ still-being-written budget proposal.
“There certainly are a lot of indicators that would suggest that we might end up having to come back in the event that there’s a dramatic cut to Medicaid,” state Sen. Judy Amabile, a Boulder Democrat and member of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, said last month, as first reported in The Colorado Sun’s politics newsletter, The Unaffiliated.
Speaking to a group of health care leaders earlier this month, Gov. Jared Polis’ budget director put it a little more bluntly. The director, Mark Ferrandino, said the state is estimating up to $1 billion in cuts to Colorado’s federal Medicaid funding under proposals being discussed in Washington, D.C..
“Just to be clear to everyone,” Ferrandino said, “if that’s the cut, we are not backfilling, which means we have to make cuts both in Medicaid and other places in the state budget to deal with it.”
Medicaid is the state’s most expensive program. The agency that runs the program has an $18 billion budget for next year. More than $10 billion in that budget comes from federal funds, meaning Colorado could be facing a 10% cut in that funding if Ferrandino’s projections are correct.
Colorado contributes about $5 billion to the Medicaid program out of the state’s general fund, making it the largest source of general fund spending. When Ferrandino says the state will not backfill, he means the state won’t chip in more general fund money to make up for the possible federal cuts. There just isn’t enough cash to do so.
This is especially true because next year will see another tight budget, regardless of what happens at the federal level. Ferrandino described what lawmakers did this year to close a $1.2 billion budget gap as essentially punting the problem into next year.