EDITORIAL: Medicaid mauls Colorado’s budget – Denver Gazette

EDITORIAL: Medicaid mauls Colorado’s budget  Denver Gazette

An update in Colorado Politics last week on Colorado’s maddening Medicaid morass pretty much said it all: The publicly funded health-care program for the poor and disabled could consume the entire state general fund in less than two decades. That alarming news was delivered on Thursday to the Commission on Medicaid, an interim committee set up by the legislature last spring as it belatedly recognized runaway spending on the program has become a bona fide crisis. The messenger was Mark Ferrandino, Gov. Jared Polis’ budget chief, who presented some grim numbers that the panel’s lawmakers will have to face when they reconvene in January. As it is, Medicaid already comprises the largest item in the state operating budget.

It devours more than a third of it. And it stands to get a lot worse as spending surges. After overshooting last year’s Medicaid allotment by $158 million, the state could overspend its 2026-27 Medicaid budget, which took effect July 1, by $443 million, according to projections by Ferrandino’s office. Next year, the overspending could reach almost $1 billion. Again, that’s just overspending — over and above the current year’s total Medicaid budget of $20.5 billion. Medicaid spending in fact has been growing at nearly double the rate of revenue increases to the state since 2021, Ferrandino told commission members. That’s right;