Denver, Colo.–The CACI Board of Directors this week voted to oppose Amendment 69, a ballot initiative that would create a state governmental universal health-care system that would mandate $25 billion in new taxes on workers, employers and taxpayers in its first full year of implementation.

The system would be called ColoradoCare.  Amendment 69 has been approved for the November 2016 ballot.  Before the initiative qualified for the ballot, it was called Initiative 20, a 12-page amendment (Article XXX) to the Colorado Constitution.

Amendment 69 would create a “health care payment system” called ColoradoCare that would collect “premium taxes” from workers, employers and taxpayers who have non-payroll income and then pay health-care providers for services rendered to the “members” and beneficiaries of ColoradoCare.

“If Amendment 69 is injected into the State Constitution, the political odds of it ever being changed by voters are slim to none,” said Chuck Berry CACI President and former Speaker of the Colorado House of Representatives, “and the state will be left to struggle with the Amendment’s enormous fiscal and bureaucratic consequences—both intended and unintended—for years to come.”

In addition, ColoradoCare would swallow up all State and Federal health-care programs (with the exception of the Veterans Administration), including four well-known, major programs:

  • Colorado’s workers’ compensation system (which is funded by employers);
  • Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides medical insurance for low-income citizens;
  • Children’s Basic Health program; and
  • Colorado Health Benefit Exchange.

CACI supported the bipartisan legislation that created the Exchange, Connect for Health Colorado.

“No state has implemented such a costly health-insurance scheme,” said Loren Furman, CACI Senior Vice President for State and Federal Policy, “and Colorado should not adopt such a risky proposition that would eliminate the current health-insurance system, which would cost tens of thousands of private-sector jobs.”

 “Amendment 69 would undoubtedly be the most massive, expensive change in Colorado State Government in recent decades,” said Dan Pilcher, CACI Executive Vice President, ”and the effects on the Colorado economy would be huge because it would eliminate the entire health-insurance industry, costing tens of thousands of private-sector jobs, while creating a giant ColoradoCare bureaucracy.”

CACI was created in 1965 when Colorado’s business leaders merged the Colorado Chamber of Commerce with the Colorado Manufacturing Association.  Because of its manufacturing legacy, CACI is the official state affiliate of the National Association of Manufacturers.

CACI’s mission is to champion a healthy business environment.  To achieve this mission, CACI pursues key four strategies: (1) maintain and improve the cost of doing business; (2) advocate a pro-business state government; (3) increase the quantity of educated, skilled workers; and (4) strengthen Colorado’s critical infrastructure (roads, water, telecommunications and energy).