Health care costs in Colorado will grow under federal policy, patient advocates say

Patients and health care providers in Colorado on Tuesday expressed anxiety around high health care costs as a result of the Trump administration's policies.

At a virtual roundtable hosted by Healthier Colorado, U.S. Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, heard from advocates about how new Medicaid requirements under H.R.1, an end of extended Affordable Care Act tax credits and other cuts from the federal government have hindered health providers' ability to offer the care that patients across the state need.

H.R.1, the federal tax cut and spending law that Congress passed last year, cut more than $1 trillion nationwide from Medicaid, a state-federal health insurance program for people with low incomes. Costs for those purchasing health insurance on Colorado's individual marketplace have doubled in the absence of enhanced federal subsidies, which Republicans in Congress declined to extend.

"H.R.1 is not a bill that's focused on addressing the health care affordability crisis, nor is it a bill that will help to strengthen the health care system," said Sophia Tripoli, senior director of health policy at Families USA, a national nonpartisan consumer advocacy organization. "It's actually just an ill-conceived attack on consumers and patients, punishing families for our nation's affordability crisis rather than the actual actors that are driving that crisis: The corporate greed of these big companies and health systems."

The affordability of health care is the top issue for voters across the spectrum going into the midterms, Tripoli said. The majority of cuts Republicans in Congress made to the health care system last year affected Medicaid recipients and seek to make the program more complex to navigate, she said.

"These cuts to our nation's safety net were made on the backs of low-income families and patients whose only lifeline to affordable coverage will now be stripped away as states and health systems have to work to implement these new bureaucratic paperwork requirements," she said.

The law will continue to destabilize a health care system that was already strained before it passed, said Donald Moore, CEO of Pueblo Community Health Center, which serves as the primary care home for about 30,000 residents in the Pueblo area. H.R.1 will make it "significantly harder" for providers to meet the already increasing demand for care.

Health care deserts, particularly for women's health care, in rural Colorado will continue to grow under the full implementation of H.R.1, said Jennifer Riley, CEO of Craig Memorial Regional Health. She said 82% of rural hospitals already operate with unsustainable margins. Charity cases at her hospital, which only go to people who meet certain financial requirements, were up 17% in 2025 compared with the prior year.

H.R.1 authorized $50 billion in rural health transformation program funding, but Riley said it "doesn't even come close" to covering what hospitals and health care providers will lose as a result of the law. That funding has a focus on innovative solutions to support rural health care, but hospitals can't afford to be innovative when they are focused on keeping their doors open, Riley said.

Hickenlooper said almost 250,000 people in Colorado will lose their Medicaid coverage because of H.R.1's new requirements. But Riley said those people will still need health care even if they aren't covered, and they will get it at "the most expensive level: the emergency departments."

Rebecca Gillett, who serves on Colorado's Health Insurance Affordability Enterprise Board, receives a costly monthly treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. Without those monthly infusion treatments, Gillett would lose a lot of her daily function and her ability to work.

She has relied on tax credits to afford that treatment and also had enrolled in Medicaid after she lost a previous job. Before the Affordable Care Act passed, Gillett had to take out a home-equity loan so she could afford her medical bills.

In 2025, Gillett's husband paid $20,000 out of his salary for health insurance premiums for their family of three. Including deductibles and out of pocket expenses, costs go up to a minimum of $28,000 each year.

"I'm happy to pay what we need to pay so that I can be a function(al) human and support my family and work and advocate for other people in the community," Gillett said. "But at the same time, how are you supposed to do anything else when you spend the majority of your income on that?"

Victoria Vicroy and both of her adult children have hemophilia, which means their blood doesn't clot properly. She said she has always met her insurance deductible with her first order of her blood clotting medicine each year, as it can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $12,000.

"There's not really a way for me to try to come up with that cash like in the first part of January every year," Vicroy said.

Costs for her family's health care has led to financial hardship for Vicroy. She's on a scholarship so she can continue to see her therapist, and she contributes to a health savings account as well. She had to take money out of her retirement savings last year to pay for medical expenses.

"Being insured for me doesn't necessarily mean being able to access care," she said. "I do all the things that they tell me to do that's going to set me up for success, and it still ends up just being completely depleted."

The Trump administration could ask Congress for as much as $200 billion in funding for what Hickenlooper said is its "illegal war" in Iran, but he said that money could instead go toward universal health care coverage, free school meals or a year of free community college for American students.

Tripoli said a lack of transparency is one of the key factors that allows corporate health care systems to drive up costs. Hickenlooper is a sponsor of the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, which would require providers to publicly display costs of their services and procedures.

"We're in the dark when it comes to almost any procedural cost, whether it's an X-ray or a tonsillectomy," Hickenlooper said. "Pretty much the only time you can compare prices is after you've had the procedure. It's the only place in our economy … where you can't see what it's going to cost."

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com.

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