DENVER, March 30, 2021—Colorado’s leading voice of small business will testify against House Bill 1232 when it comes up for its first hearing tomorrow, Wednesday, March 31, in the House Health & Insurance Committee of the Colorado General Assembly.

“I do give credit to the proponents of the ‘public option’ health-care plan for cleverness,” said Tony Gagliardi, Colorado state director for the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), the nation’s largest and leading small-business association. “What they failed to achieve with a single-payer plan that was proposed as a ballot initiative in 2016, they are now trying to come through the back door with a so-called ‘public option’ plan, which, over time, will lead to a single-payer system and all the commensurate costs, premium increases, and lack of choice that will entail.”

NFIB consistently surveys its small-business-owning members on the biggest issues of concern in owning, operating, and growing their enterprises, and results from the past four decades have revealed the cost and availability of health insurance to be the No. 1 worry of small-business owners—every single year.

“For as long as we’ve been polling our members on health care, for just as long, we’ve been advocating in state legislatures across the country and in Congress for getting health-care costs under control as the necessary first step toward greater health-care coverage for every American,” said Gagliardi, who will list nine better directions the Legislature can take than empowering the state’s insurance commissioner to eventually and effectively muscle private health insurers, who insure the majority of Coloradans, out of business and out of the state.

“House Bill 1232 is not designed to compete with private insurance plans,” added Gagliardi. “It is designed to force as many Colorado families as possible into a new government-controlled health insurance system and shift costs to those with private insurance. This would be achieved by the required rate adjustments outlined in the bill. Private carriers would reach a point when the ability to compete with HB 1232 is near to impossible. For years, concern has always been about the level of premiums. We can discuss premiums all day long, but the question is why aren’t we discussing what drives those premiums.”

Contact: Tony Gagliardi, Colorado State Director, tony.gagliardi@nfib.org,
or Tony Malandra, Senior Media Manager, anthony.malandra@nfib.org

Keep up with the latest Colorado small-business news at www.nfib.com/colorado or by following NFIB on Twitter @NFIB_CO or on Facebook @NFIB.CO

###

For more than 77 years, NFIB has been advocating on behalf of America’s small and independent business owners, both in Washington, D.C., and in all 50 state capitals. NFIB is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, and member-driven association. Since its founding in 1943, NFIB has been exclusively dedicated to small and independent businesses and remains so today. For more information, please visit nfib.com.

NFIB Colorado
1700 Lincoln Street, 17th Floor
Denver, CO 80203
303-860-1778
www.nfib.com/colorado
Twitter: @NFIB_CO
Facebook: NFIB.CO