Jerry Sonnenberg to back hospital provider fee change

While conservative lawmakers are squabbling about how to finance an immediate need for $3.5 billion for transportation projects, one of their own has quietly been working on a solution that will take some by surprise: reclassifying the hospital provider fee.
    The hospital provider fee is a bookkeeping maneuver that could free up more than $350 million per year to fund transportation, K-12 education and health care.
    It’s that last piece — health care — and a concern about keeping the doors of rural hospitals open, that changed President Pro Tem Jerry Sonnenberg’s mind about changing the fee. Republicans have previously argued that changing how the fee is handled would be illegal.
    Tuesday, March 21, Sonnenberg, a Sterling Republican, got permission to run the bill (required for bills introduced late in the session) from Senate President Kevin Grantham, a Cañon City Republican.
    The provider fee works like this: Every hospital in Colorado is charged a fee on the number of inpatient overnight stays per day, as well as the number of outpatient services provided. That money is pooled and then matched with federal dollars, and redistributed back to hospitals to expand Medicaid, pay for health care for people who use emergency rooms for non-emergency treatment and reimburse hospitals for indigent care.
    The fee brings in about $700 million per year.
    The problem: That money counts against the revenue limits established under the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights. The revenue limit is the amount of general fund (made up of income and sales taxes) the state is allowed to keep each year to pay for state government operations. The provider fee is pushing the state over its revenue cap, and that money must then be refunded to taxpayers.
  

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