Colorado Gov Moves To Gut Health Care Coverage for Illegal Immigrant Children Amid Spiraling Medicaid Costs

Left-wing groups panned Jared Polis’s ‘draconian cuts’

Colorado Democrats and immigration activists cheered after Gov. Jared Polis (D.) signed a signature 2022 health care law providing coverage to children and “pregnant persons” living in the United States illegally. Four years later, Polis, now a lame duck, is calling to gut the Cover All Coloradans program in his final budget proposal in an attempt to address the state’s spiraling Medicaid costs, and left-wing groups aren’t happy.

Polis released his budget on the eve of the midterm elections—one day after the legally mandated deadline to do so—and proposed $600 million in state Medicaid cuts. He called Medicaid’s growth “unsustainable” and told reporters it was on track to “crowd out everything else, including education.”

Buried in the proposal is a section calling to “replace Cover All Coloradans” by redirecting funds to a separate program, the Primary Care Fund, which offers financial assistance to low-income, uninsured residents for health care. Illegal immigrant children are eligible for that benefit but would lose the comprehensive insurance plan provided by Cover All Coloradans. A fact sheet notes that Polis aims “to end Cover All Coloradans coverage for children,” but “coverage for pregnant and postpartum adults would continue.”

Polis’s budget would strip some $10 million from Cover All Coloradans, with about half of that going to the Primary Care Fund.

Liberal groups widely panned Polis for proposing reductions to Colorado’s Medicaid program. The Colorado Center on Law and Policy accused him of proposing “draconian budget cuts,” while Colorado Consumer Health Initiative deputy director Adam Fox said Polis “is now proposing more cuts to lifesaving programs rather than supporting a viable solution.”

Polis’s call to gut a top left-wing priority reflects a “growing divide in Colorado’s Democratic Party” amid the looming budget crisis, said Nash Herman, a policy analyst with the Independence Institute, a free-market think tank.

“Because Governor Polis is a lame duck Governor, he is finally starting to stand up to the progressive wing of his party,” he told the Washington Free Beacon. Herman said it was easy for Polis to support programs like Cover All Coloradans while the state was flush with cash and the governor needed to make political deals, but “the problem with appeasing the progressive wing of his party is that it will never be enough, and I think he now realizes that the state went too far.”

Cover All Coloradans passed along party lines in 2022 with support from leadership in both chambers, including incoming speaker of the House Jennifer Bacon, a left-wing Democrat. While signing the bill creating the program, among others, Polis said, “We are truly meeting the needs of the moment and building a Colorado for All.” One sponsor, then-state representative Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez, called it “life-changing for undocumented children and pregnant people.”

Even as Colorado faced a $1.5 billion budget shortfall in the spring—and after the program’s costs soared to nearly $105 million as illegal immigrants poured into the state, seven times more than the state expected—Democrats managed to keep Cover All Coloradans on the books, albeit with benefit reductions and enrollment caps. Polis signed off on that arrangement, which was included in this year’s budget bill, in May. Just a few months later, he was backpedaling on his support for the program.

“Polis appears to recognize the risk of more severe cuts in the future if this isn’t addressed now, and since he is not up for reelection, he is more willing to put up with the backlash for the sake of the economy and budget,” said Herman.

The brewing fight mirrors the one emerging in Washington, D.C. Incoming socialists in the House of Representatives, including Colorado Democrat Melat Kiros, have refused to back House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.) for speaker of the House, while Sen. Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) is losing support to left-wing Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) in his bid for Senate majority leader.

The Colorado legislature’s six-member Joint Budget Committee, which develops the budget, can choose to fully ignore Polis’s proposal, as well as any recommendations by governor-elect Phil Weiser (D.) after his January 12 inauguration. The panel typically develops the budget in late March or early April and sends it to the full legislature shortly thereafter.

Democrats, with supermajorities in both chambers, will need to find a way to close an estimated $1.6 billion shortfall. Medicaid spending is projected to grow by 15 percent—Polis’s proposal reduced that to 4.3 percent. State health care spending doubled between 2015 and 2025 and is expected to take up 41 percent of the 2027 budget, according to an analysis by the right-leaning Common Sense Institute.

Weiser punted on Polis’s proposal and said he is waiting for recommendations from an ongoing Medicaid commission that is studying the program’s growth. None of the Democrats on the Joint Budget Committee have weighed in, but when Polis recommended $537 million in Medicaid cuts last year, state senator Judy Amabile (D.) said her concern “is that we are impacting our most vulnerable populations in the state.”