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First Regular Session

Sixty-first General Assembly

LLS NO. R97@0806.01 JBB

STATE OF COLORADO

BY SENATORS Wham, Norton, and Chlouber;

also REPRESENTATIVE Anderson.

HEALTH, ENVIRONMENT, WELFARE

AND INSTITUTIONS

SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION 97-24

SEEKING AN END TO THE MEDICARE DEMONSTRATION PROGRAM IN THE DENVER METROPOLITAN AREA.

WHEREAS, The federal health care financing administration, referred to as "HCFA", that oversees medicare and medicaid has decided to use the Denver metropolitan area as a test site for an experimental demonstration program to provide services to medicare beneficiaries; and

WHEREAS, This demonstration program will affect seniors who have voluntarily chosen a private health plan for receiving medicare benefits; and

WHEREAS, The Denver area is already home to a very competitive medicare health maintenance organization market where six HMOs provide care to 113,000 seniors who have chosen this alternative to the traditional, fee­for­service medicare; and

WHEREAS, As a result of this competition, seniors receive numerous additional benefits, such as prescription drugs that traditional medicare does not cover and for which they pay no fee; and

WHEREAS, Officials from HCFA acknowledge that the demonstration program will most likely result in reducing benefits and increasing costs to seniors; and

WHEREAS, Many retired military seniors, who were recently forced into the medicare system following the closure of Fitzsimons Army Medical Center last year, chose HMOs because they are similar to the type of care previously provided through military retirement benefits; and

WHEREAS, Officials from HCFA acknowledge that they did not even know that Fitzsimons Army Medical Center had closed when Denver was selected as the demonstration program site; and

WHEREAS, Some Denver area physicians are concerned that the demonstration program will result in a reduction of the number of physicians willing to provide care to medicare beneficiaries and have expressed fear that the quality of health care for seniors may suffer as a result of the demonstration program; and

WHEREAS, HCFA has decided to add an expensive layer of confusing bureaucracy to medicare HMOs in the Denver area market system by requiring the use of a third­party enrollment broker whose customer service center will be based in Oregon thereby not accommodating seniors who wish to meet face­to­face to have someone explain the process and options; now, therefore,

Be It Resolved by the Senate of the Sixty­first General Assembly of the State of Colorado, the House of Representatives concurring herein:

That the Colorado General Assembly requests that Governor Romer and the members of Colorado's congressional delegation seek an end to this demonstration program.

Be It Further Resolved, That copies of this Joint Resolution be sent to the Governor, to all members of the Colorado delegation of the United States Senate and the House of Representatives, and to the regional and national office of the department of health care financing administration.