Colorado Launches New Study On Single Payer Health Care A Decade After Being Rejected By Voters

By Mary Shinn | The Denver Gazette

Colorado residents owe about $1 billion in medical debt. 

The sky-high number is a small portion of the nation’s medical debt estimated around $220 billion, according to a 2024 analysis by Peterson Center on Healthcare and KFF, formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation. 

As more people nationally are expected to lose their health insurance following planned cuts and changes to Medicaid in January 2027, the Colorado School of Public Health is starting work on a study to analyze how the state could set up a single-payer health insurance program that would be run at the state level. Such a system could simplify the complicated private insurance system and ensure all state residents have coverage. 

“It would be simple. It would be fair,” said Marsha Thorson, a board member with the Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care. Thorson also helped her husband found and run his private family medical practice. 

The foundation announced earlier this month it helped raise $750,000 for the Colorado School of Public Health to study a statewide single-payer health care system. The Colorado legislature mandated the study last year but did not fund it.  

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