DENVER – The Hospital Provider Fee debate was all set to be renewed at the Colorado Capitol on Tuesday, but it abruptly came crashing to a halt.
Senate Bill 57 would have done away with the current provider fee and the board that oversees it. It would replace the fee with an ‘enterprise’ fee that would not count toward the tax revenue cap the Legislature is allowed to retain in its General Fund each year. But it was quickly killed by its sponsor, Senate Minority Leader Lucía Guzmán, D-Denver, during a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee.
Guzmán said the bill was an opportunity to sustain and promote hospitals, but the incarnation brought before the committee Tuesday was not the bill that would accomplish that.
“It’s pretty much a sure thing that we have a late bill that will be coming forth that has been worked on bipartisanly,” she said. “It has had some great work, some great ideas, and I believe that the best thing to do is to (kill) this bill and prepare for another bill that is coming forward.”
When this new bill will be introduced or whom among the GOP delegation will sponsor it is unknown, but the talk of the provider fee and its impacts have been recurrent this session.
The Hospital Provider Fee works by accessing a fee on facilities that is matched by the federal government and reimbursed to a hospital based on a formula that largely favors rural facilities. The issue is that the revenue generated by the fee is counted towards the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR) cap and triggers a refund to taxpayers out of the state’s General Fund even though the funding goes directly back into the health care system.
TABOR limits state government spending and taxing to no more than the rate of inflation plus population growth, any tax revenue collected in excess of the formula must be refunded to taxpayers.
To bypass refunds this year, a $195 million reduction in the amount gathered from hospitals under the fee and the matching revenue from the federal government, was proposed in the governor’s 2017-18 budget.
Making it an enterprise fee was listed as a priority by both Guzmán and Gov. John Hickenlooper, who mentioned it in his State of the State speech in January and told reporters on Tuesday that any reform to the fee would have to be bipartisan.
Making it an enterprise fee would keep the state from having to refund $279.4 million in the 2017-18 fiscal year and $287.2 million in 2018-19.
The change would also increase transfers toward transportation infrastructure by more than $226.8 million and capital construction by $103.4 million over the next two years by not triggering the TABOR cap, which limits transfers when it is exceeded.
lperkins@durangoherald.com
