Republicans have been blaming Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid, the state-federal health care program for the poor, for Colorado’s budget woes—even though the Obamacare expansion of Medicaid didn’t cost Colorado anything.

State Sen. Tim Neville, who’s leading a pack of Republicans vying for the chance to unseat Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, jumped on the baseless Medicaid-bashing bandwagon in a Jan. 4 interview with the “Americhicks,” Molly Vogt and Kim Munson, on KLZ 560-AM.

Neville: I believe it’s time for the government to re-prioritize, and of course the 800-pound gorilla in the room is the Medicaid expansion, which the governor did several years ago, eating every single dollar that we have in increased expense.

Not only is this false, but it’s really mean, as it pits everything else the government is struggling to pay for (roads, schools, etc.) against funds for the (mostly) working poor, especially those undeserving old and disabled people.

Maybe Neville really meant that he thinks Medicaid is costing the state too much—which, again, would have nothing to do with Obamacare. The program’s costs are increasing, but less than in previous years, due to the growing numbers of elderly and disabled people who are enrolled.

If he’s worried about Medicaid costs, Neville should explain how he wants to “re-prioritize” government, as he put it, and specifically how he’d cut Medicaid or alter it. Neville is known to be unafraid of expressing his Tea Party views, but I can’t find any explanation from him on this one.

I don’t think Neville would follow the lead of GOP Sen. President Bill Cadman, who declined to explain how he’d change Medicaid but, instead, he actually told a reporter to put the question to Democratic Speaker of the state House, Dickey Lee Hullinghorst, even though she’s never suggested cutting Medicaid, as Cadman essentially did last month.

Maybe the Americhicks, who take personal responsibility seriously, will have Neville back on their show—or even land Cadman—and extract some specifics about their Medicaid plans. And, while they’re at it, everyone would love to hear a detail or two on how they’d like to shore up Colorado’s budget.

A key component of Obamcare is to reduce the number of uninsured  by allowing more people to qualify for Medicaid, the federal-state health care program for low-income people. In Colorado, some 300,000 people enrolled in Medicaid as part of Obamcare–and the federal government picked up the tab.

But that fact didn’t stop Senate President Bill Cadman (R-Colorado Springs) from joining conservative Jon Caldara Monday in blaming Colorado’s Medicaid expansion under Obamacare for Colorado’s budget woes.

Caldara (at 2 min 30 seconds): In the last few years…Medicaid enrollment has gone up 350 percent. Do I have that right?

Cadman: Absolutely.

Caldara: And because of that, it’s squeezing out other things. [Emphasis added]

Cadman: Yes, Yes… we do have one program that has grown 350 percent in that same amount of time, and if you look back just one year ago, the growth was only 280 percent. So think of the growth in just the last year. And at the peak, about a year and a half ago, we were adding about 14,000 people per month to this program. And you can call this an offshoot of Obamacare, because that’s really what it is.

Why Cadman gave the eager “yes, yes” to Caldara is a mystery because Obamacare isn’t “squeezing out other things.”

While it’s true that Colorado’s Medicaid costs are increasing, though by less than in previous years, the reason, as I expalin here, is mostly due to the costs of caring for the growing numbers of elderly and disabled people.

Cadman’s baseless scapegoating of Obamacare is echoed in the official Twitter feed of the Colorado State Republicans.

Colorado Senate GOP (@ColoSenGOP) sent out this tweet, linking to a chart of state and federal Medicaid expenditures: “Maybe Colo could afford FullDayK if #Dems weren’t pouring every spare $ into Obamacare #choices #copolitics #coleg pic.twitter.com/zrS1L6v5KO.”

Cadman repeatedly talks, vaguely, as if Colorado is footing the full bill for the Obamacare expansion of Colorado Medicaid. In a 9News interview last month, Cadman stated that “we added nearly $300 million to [the Medicaid] program in Health and Human Services last year. The year before that, we added $250 million to that program. The year before that, we added another $250 million.”

If the “we” he refers to is Colorado, which is likely because he also talked about how Medicaid was squeezing out other state programs, then he’s again got his numbers wrong. Here are the actual increases in Colorado’s contribution to Medicaid  the past few years.

Notice that the increases actually went down the past two years–contrary to the Cadman’s implication in multiple interviews.

FY10-11 – $128 million
FY11-12 – $420 million
FY12-13 – $154 ,million
FY13-14 – $214 million
FY14-15 – $285 million
FY15-16 – $155 million
FY16-17 Request – $136 million

Again, these increases have nothing to do with Obamacare, but they are real increases, mostly due to serving growing numbers of old and disabled people, that the legislature has to deal with, along with other funding needs, like roads, K-12 education, and higher education. And, oh, there’s next year’s projected budget shortfall of about $250 million.

Yet, in multiple interviews, Cadman blames Medicaid for budget shortfalls, telling 9News, for example:

Cadman: “We have the money” but Medicaid is “demanding literally every dollar that could have been spent on virtually everything else.”

Literally every dollar!

So Cadman is, either intentionally or unintentionally, using misinformation about Medicaid to dodge questions about how to fund (or cut) state priorities.

Bottom line: If Cadman were doing his job, rather than blaming Obamacare or Medicaid, he’d be telling reporters what real-life option, or combination of them, he advocates for dealing with Colorado’s budget woes. (Cadman’s office did not offer a comment to me.)

One option, among others, is to turn the hospital provider fee into an TABOR-defined enterprise, freeing up about $370 million in TABOR rebates for state programs. Another option is to lay out specific budget cuts, including Medicaid cuts. Others would require voter approval, like a TABOR timeout or a tax increases. Cadman could advocate for an increase in government fees, including an increase in Medicaid co-pays, an idea floated by Cadman.

And there are other options, from the left and right, but whatever they are, the budget problems Colorado faces are not caused by Obamacare.

Colorado Senate President Bill Cadman (R-Colorado Springs) told 9News political reporter Brandon Rittiman last month that Medicaid spending is siphoning money from “every other program,” including schools and roads.

As he told 9News political reporter Brandon Rittiman:

Cadman: “[Democrats] have ignored the needs and demands of about five million people to specifically support one program, and it cannibalizes every other program. They’ve ignored the Constitution and put K-12 money into this program. I mean, they’ve ignored the roads, and put money into this program.

Cadman and other Republicans have made similar statements in multiple interviews.

The missing follow-up question in all these interviews is, does he propose to cut Medicaid? It sounds a lot like he is, but he doesn’t say so directly.

Cadman: “What I am suggesting is, when you have something that is supposed to be the safety net, you should protect it for those who need it the most,” Cadman told Rittiman, when asked if he wanted to eliminate Medicaid. “And if you grow it beyond that, and you are creating a program that is, one, cannibalizing the other programs and, two, has no funding source, you are creating a conflict.”

So, clearly, reporters should ask Cadman, whose spokesman did not provide a comment to me, if he thinks Medicaid, has grown beyond the “safety net” it’s “supposed to be.”

If he thinks so, he could, for example, advocate changing the formula for qualifying for the Medicaid. Currently, to be eligible for Colorado’s Medicaid program, families of four must make less than about $32,000 a year and individuals less than $16,000. Over a million people are enrolled state-wide. Keep in mind that about 75 percent of people who receive Medicaid are working already.

But before anyone starts throwing poor people off Medicaid, as Cadman seems to be proposing, or charging them more, he should be clear that the driving force behind the growing state costs of Medicaid aren’t coming from adding new people to the program.

About 300,000 people were added to Colorado’s Medicaid program under Obamacare, but 100 percent  of their coverage was picked up by the federal government (which gradually decreases to 90 percent in 2022). With exceptions for children, the cost of non-Obamacare Medicaid is split evenly between the state and the feds.

But even with the feds covering most (but not all) new enrollees, the cost of Medicaid to the state is increasing, by $136 million in this year’s budget proposal and $155 million last year.

Why? It’s largely due to the growing numbers of elderly and disabled people enrolled in Medicaid, who are expensive to take care of, according to Rich Jones Director of Policy and Research at the Bell Policy Center. The two cost drivers feed each other because, as you’d expect, the more elderly you have the more disabled people you eventually get.

Jones points to state data showing that about 82 percent of the proposed $102.8 million increase in state funding for Medicaid premiums (a subset of this year’s $136 million increase) is going to people with disabilities and the elderly.

In the current year, Jones points out, 12 percent of the people enrolled in Colorado’s Medicaid program were elderly and disabled, but they accounted for 42 percent of the costs of the program. Last year, it was 11 percent of enrollees and 40 percent of the costs. Covering the elderly and disabled under Medicaid requires seven times more funding than covering a child and three to four times more than an adult.

“I think this shows that our aging population and the cost of long-term care is a key factor driving the Medicaid budget,” said Jones. “A lot of these folks are middle class seniors who have spent down their assets and must rely on Medicaid to cover their long-term care costs.”

So an efficient way for Cadman to cut Medicaid might be to somehow cut down on the specific people, the elderly and disabled, who are the root cause of the program’s increasing costs.

I’m joking of course. Cadman wouldn’t want to do this.

But, seriously, what would he cut?

Here’s more of Cadman’s interview on 9News’ Balance of Power Jan. 17, 2016.

Cadman: We have the money. We have, again, a record budget. The reality is, where is it being spent? And what has never been discussed, what doesn’t get brought up, what you don’t hear in the State of the State speech [by Gov. John Hickenlooper] is, by the way, we added nearly $300 million to a program in Health and Human Services last year. The year before that, we added $250 million to that program. The year before that, we added another $250 million. And this goes back to when Gov. Ritter was here. Gov. Hickenlooper has picked up the mantel. They have ignored the needs and demands of about five million people to specifically support one program, and it cannibalizes every other program. They’ve ignored the constitution and put K-12 money into this program. I mean, they’ve ignored the roads, and put money into this program. We’ve come to the table year after year after year, and I’ve been here a while, and I still have the notes of over ten years of saying, ‘Here’s how we can start managing some of the growth in this program while we’re helping to prioritize funds for other programs. It’s completely fallen on deaf ears. We’re always at the table.

Rittiman: Are you talking about Medicaid?

Cadman: We’re talking about Medicaid and the expansion of Medicaid, and all the subsequent programs in it. And it’s a big complicated issue, but it is demanding literally every dollar that could have been spend on virtually everything else. And when you share that with people, and the history, and you show them how the money’s been spent, everyone’s always in shock, because it’s always been used and it’s never being talked about.

Rittiman: Are you suggesting getting rid of Medicaid?

Cadman: Nope. I’m not suggesting getting rid of Medicaid. But what I am suggesting is, when you have something that is supposed to be the safety net, you should protect it for those who need it the most. And if you grow it beyond that, and you are creating a program that is, one, cannibalizing the other programs and, two, has no funding source, you are creating a conflict. And as soon as you have that, you can promote a crisis. That’s exactly what’s been happening.

Rittiman: How do you change that?..

Cadman: The math of growing this program with no borders has never worked, but the chose to grow it anyway. So maybe that’s a great question to go back to the speaker [of the state House, Democrat Dickey Lee Hullinghorst] and say, ‘Why have you supported this knowing it’s doing this to the budget, since you’ve been here, I believe this is her eighth year.’

Two sort-of prominent Colorado Republicans are apparently refusing to delete offensive comments on their Facebook pages.

Here are the comments, written by commenters on the Facebook pages of Sate Rep. State Rep. Stephen Humphrey (R-Severence) and Denver congressional candidate Casper Stockham.

In response to an article, posted by Humphrey on his Facebook page, in which Democratic House Speaker Dickey Lee Hullinghorst (D-Boulder) criticizes anti-choice “ideologues,” one commenter, Daniel Lanotte, wrote, “Just think where we would be now if Speaker Hullinghorst’s mother had chosen the Speaker’s solution.”

A comment on Stockham’s Facebook page, written in response to an article with the headline,”Breaking: Grand Jury Indicts pro-life investigator behind baby parts video; clears Planned Parenthood,” “Who the hell is this judge that determined this? I’m so angry at Planned Parenthood right now. I wish someone would just blow up their facilities.”

Stockham tells me he doesn’t have time to delete “stupid” stuff from his Facebook page, though he did have time to write comments in the same thread where the blow-up-Planned-Parenthood wish appears.

Humphrey, who introduced a bill last month in the legislature banning all abortion in Colorado, even for rape and incest, hasn’t deleted the Hullinghorst insult, since I told him about it in a voice mail Thursday. (But the commenter himself, David Lanotte, says he was intending only to express his opposition to abortion, not insult Hullinghorst. Lanotte said, “I was not saying that I wish she were aborted.”)

For an RH Reality Check post on the topic today, I asked an expert whether politicians and candidates are responsible for such comments on their Facebook pages. An this has relevance for reporters covering these types of issues.

“When you look at the sheer volume of what people put on Facebook, it’s unrealistic to expect staff or candidates to keep up with it,” said Boise State Associate Professor  Justin Vaughn, author of Controlling the Message: New Media in American Political Campaigns. “They might be getting thousands of comments. Unless we know there’s active support, we should be cautious about inferring that inaction means tacit support.”

But Vaughn said the expectation could be different if a politician knows about the comment or actively promotes it, by retweeting a tweet on Twitter or ‘liking’ a post on Facebook.”

“If the campaign is made aware of an offensive comment and refuses to take action, that’s another story,” said Vaughn.

Vaughn said there could be a political expectation that a candidate will use “certain moments to communicate with the electorate about the limits of political discourse.”

He pointed to a 2008 presidential debate when Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) corrected a questioner’s assertion that then Sen. Barack Obama was a  Sen. Barack Obama was a untrustworthy Arab.

On the radio Tuesday, GOP Chair Steve House amplified Republican lawmakers’ objections to the parental-leave legislation, which advanced in the state House yesterday.

Steve House said the bill, which allows parents to attend a limited number of school functions, is unneeded because employers already treat their employees nicely.

House: The point you just brought up,  one of the biggest problems we have as a Party is, we let the Democrats get away with the wrong premise — the premise in that case being that the average employer is not going to take care of their employees, or be flexible — like you just described– so therefore the government has to do it.   That’s crazy.  I’ve worked for a number of employers in my life.  I’ve watched employers deal with the fact that an employee needed  time to go to a school, or you know, to a meeting in the middle of the day. It doesn’t require government intervention unless your premise is all employers are too mean-spirited to do it, and that’s ridiculous!

KLZ 560-AM’s Steve Curtis didn’t ask Steve House, “What’s the big deal, if employers are so nice anyway. Why not have the law in place for the ones that are mean and greedy?’

We know there’s a few of them out there.

Reporters have struggled to find a short-hand description for the “hospital provider fee,” because  it’s impossible to describe briefly. And lengthy descriptions of it often require multiple readings. And that’s without trying to understand the intracacies of why it’s such a big deal.

So the Colorado Independent did us all a favor by dedicating a full article to: “What you need to know about Colorado’s biggest political battle. It’s called the hospital provider fee, and it’s complicated. Let’s break it down.”

You should take a few minutes to read the entire piece, by the Independent’s Corey Hutchins, but here are a few paragraphs:

The hospital provider fee is a state program requiring hospitals to pay money each year depending on how many patients stayed in hospital beds overnight and how much outpatient services they provided. That money is then used, among other things, to help Coloradans who can’t afford insurance plans get care, and to help the state pay for people who are on Medicaid, which is a government healthcare program for low-income Coloradans and their families.

Each hospital pays a different amount — some pay a lot, some pay nothing — and the fee hauled in nearly $700 million last year. This money is then matched almost dollar for dollar by the federal government to expand Medicaid, provide health coverage for Coloradans who are using emergency rooms for non-emergency treatment, and reimburse hospitals for care. The more money the fee brings in the more money the feds give Colorado to make sure people who can’t afford healthcare get it. Since 2009, the program has helped more than 300,000 people get insurance coverage….

Democratic Sen. Pat Steadman, who sits on the state’s budget committee, explains it like this: Picture a bucket with water pouring in. The incoming water is state revenues, and when the bucket fills to the top (or hits its TABOR limits) water starts pouring over the edge— and that overflowing water (money) goes back to taxpayers in the form of rebates. Now, picture rocks in the bottom of the bucket. One of those big rocks is money from the hospital provider fee. It’s money that takes up space in the bucket, and those who want to take a big rock out can do so by reclassifying the hospital provider fee into an enterprise.

In a article at the end of last year, Durango Herald reporter Peter Marcus reported that Colorado Republicans plan to continue introducing anti-abortion legislation during the upcoming legislative session, some of it specifically targeting Planned Parenthood. Marcus reported:

This year, some Republicans are discussing measures to curb Planned Parenthood’s financial resources – though it does not receive direct state funding – while also forcing an investigation. Republicans also want to impose restrictions on fetal-tissue research programs and require abortion providers to counsel women on cremation and burial options.

This legislative effort to “require abotion providers to counsel women on cremation and burial options” got my attention, as it appears to be a new appraoch here–though it’s been tried nationally.

It turns out that Americans United for Life, a national anti-abortion group that provides state legislators with model legislation, has a bill posted on its website with details on what such counseling might look like and whay it would be proposed. Part of the reason for the bill, as you can read below at number 6, would be to stop fetal-tissue research.

..the purposes of this Act are to:

(1) Ensure that the mother of a deceased unborn infant is given the opportunity to bury or dispose of the bodily remains of her infant with
dignity and respect;
(2) Require institutions where deceased unborn infants are delivered or where unborn infants are aborted to provide a dignified final disposition of the
bodily remains of these infants;
(3) Require fetal death reports for all fetal deaths as defined in this Act;
(4) Ensure that parents of all stillborn infants are offered the opportunity to obtain a [Certificate of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth];
(5) Prohibit the sale, transfer, distribution, or other unlawful disposition of an
infant, an unborn infant, or bodily remains resulting from an abortion;
(6) Prohibit the use of bodily remains resulting from an abortion for experimentation; and
(7) Ensure that the bodily remains of an unborn infant resulting from an occurrence other than an abortion are not sold, transferred, or distributed for experimentation without the mother’s informed, written consent.

We don’t know whether Colorado’s bill, if one is introduced, will include all of this, but it appears state Republicans will continue their focus on fetal-tissue research in Colorado.

In a fundraising email yesterday, Colorado Senate President Bill Cadman hisses at The Denver Post, writing:

Cadman: “You see, liberal newspapers like the Denver Post want to use this in an attempt to divide Republicans. They can’t comprehend individual thinking.”

Cadman was mad about Post reporter John Frank’s article Sunday exposing an “ideological divide” among Republicans in the state legislature that reflects the division we see on stage at GOP presidential debates. Drawing on GOP voting records, Frank’s piece outlines a pattern of Republican opposition, particularly by eight GOP state senators, to legislation that Cadman and other state Republicans supported.

Cadman’s email didn’t cite any data to support his view that The Denver Post is “liberal,” and a call to his press officer was not returned. But everyone knows The Post isn’t out to get the Republicans. There’s no basis for the accusation.

But that doesn’t stop Cadman from trying to raise money by trashing the newspaper and, by extension, the profession of journalism. How statesmanlike of him.

Over the years, I’ve chronicled these cheap attacks in Colorado (e.g, from Sen. Cory Gardner and former Secretary of State Scott Gessler.).

In this case, you have Cadman asserting that The Post can’t comprehend individual thinking, even though Cadman himself blamed his Republican opponents for not trying hard enough to iron out their individual differences.

Cadman told Frank that “Republicans who opposed the bills ‘maybe should have exerted a little more influence before they got to the floor.'”

Plus,  how could The Denver Post, even if it wanted to, divide the Republicans any better than the Republicans divide themselves? Seriously.

I’m waiting for someone like Cadman or Gardner to have the guts take their accusations against The Denver Post out of shadowy fundraising emails and talk radio and have a real debate about it. Maybe one of them would like to challenge The Post’s John Frank or Post Politics Editor Chuck Plunkett to a debate. Or Post Editor Greg Moore. That would be fun to see.

NARAL Pro-Choice Colorado issued a report yesterday exposing the legislative influence in Colorado of two national anti-choice organizations, Americans United for Life (AUL) and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), as well as the state-wide network of “crisis pregnancy centers.”

During the last legislative session, five bills and one resolution were modeled on AUL draft legislation, and AUL staff testified at numerous committee hearings, according to the report, titled “Against Our Will: How National Anti-Choice Groups are Targeting the Pro-Choice Majority in Colorado.”

None of these bills had much chance of becoming law, as pro-choice Democrats control the governor’s office and state house.

But two of the proposed laws generated serious media attention: a measure requiring women to have an ultrasound prior to obtaining an abotion and a “fetal personhood” bill giving legal rights to a fetus, potentially threatening abortion rights, and allowing prosecutors to bring murder charges if a fetus is destroyed during criminal acts.

These two bills  were co-sponsored by key Republicans in the state, including the leading GOP candidate for U.S. Senate, State Sen. Tim Neville, and Westminster State Sen., Laura Woods, whose race next year will likely determine control of the state senate.

The AUL legislation was backed in Colorado by ADF, which frequently dispatched senior consel Mike Norton, husband of failed U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton, to the state Capitol to testify, according to the report.

AUL and ADF did not retrun my calls seeking comment for a post I wrote on this topic today for RH Reality Check.

One AUL resolution that cleared the Colorado Senate last session indicated support for government assistence to pregnancy resource centers–though such entities currently receive no state funding.

“They are a national network of generally unlicensed, unregulated anti-choice organizations posing as clinics,” the report stated. “Not only do they try to discourage women from getting an abortion with medically-inaccurate information, they use misleading advertising about their intent to get them in the door.”

The 60 CPCs in Colorado outnumber abortion providers in the state by approximately three to one, according to the report.

The largest affiliate of CPCs, Care Net, describes itself welcoming women “facing unplanned pregnancies with life-affirming compassion, hope, and help. Every year about 30,000 people volunteer at these pregnancy centers. And since 2009, there has been a 20 percent growth in the number of Care Net centers providing free ultrasounds to their clients.”

With Hanukkah behind me, and fresh from celebrating the solstice (and looking forward to Christmas), I saw this Facebook post by Derrick Wilburn, Vice Chair of the Colorado Republican Party.

Wilburn: For what its worth, not one of the Democrat candidates in last night’s debate mentioned or invoked “God” at any point, not even closing statements. The Republican candidates, at the very least, would end their closing statements with “God bless America” or similar. As close as any of the three last night came was Hilary who closed with, “And may the force be with you.”

Is it relevant? To some yes, to some no, but this much is inarguable – from removing of “God” from the wording of it’s 2012 platform (then subsequently adding Him back in via a rigged vote resulting in God Himself being boo’d on the convention floor) to last night’s complete snubbing, the Democrat Party is marching toward a wholly secular existence at neck-breaking speed. Some may think that’s a good thing some may not, but neither side can dispute that it is truth.

Obviously religion is important in America, but how long will Republicans promote themselves, even in a veiled manner as Wilburn does, as the party of God and Country? While taking jabs at secularism? It can’t last, with the country going in the opposite direction? Well…

More Facebook viewing turned up this post, by State Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt (R-Colorado Springs), in which he goes further than Wilburn. He tells us who, among the believers, are the heretics and who aren’t .

“This graph separates the non-Christian, heretical, apostate churches from the true Christian churches in our generation,” wrote Klingenschmitt on Facebook, pointing to data showing that members of many Protestant denominations are now more accepting of homosexuality.

You don’t have to say “Thank God” to appreciate that trend, especially around Christmas.