January 03, 2010 07:54 AM UTC

A Very Nasty Bill, Indeed

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Colorado Independent followed up Thursday on a piece of legislation we discussed a few days ago in relation to the recent disaffiliation of Rep. Kathleen Curry from the Democratic Party. To briefly recap, we described the bill as “crafted by the insurance industry,” seeking a moratorium on new health coverage mandates of the kind that have passed in recent years and expected this coming session–and asserted that Curry’s sponsorship of the bill may have played a role in her party change, a switch that appears erratic and ill-planned as she must now mount a difficult write-in campaign for re-election. We note that the bill’s role in her switch has been “adamantly” downplayed by Rep. Curry, but the details of said legislation have got to make you wonder.

For one thing, it is absolutely “crafted by the insurance industry.” And nasty.

A proposed bill that would institute a one-year moratorium on insurance mandates aims to wipe out a number of measures slated for next session, including legislation that would require Colorado insurance companies to cover maternity care and birth control.

The moratorium is being proposed by the Colorado State Association of Health Underwriters (CSAHU), according to CSAHU lobbyist Cindy Sovine-Miller. Although the health insurance industry group is still working to land Senate sponsors, Sovine-Miller said she expects Ellen Roberts, a Durango Republican, and Kathleen Curry, a Western Slope Democrat-turned-Independent to carry the bill in the House…

Sovine-Miller said she expected the bill to come early in the session, presumably to head off any mandate bills legislators intend to introduce. [Pols emphasis]

“This bill is probably going to come right out of the gate. We really want to set the tone for the session,” she said.

According to Sovine-Miller, the bill aims to point out that requiring insurance companies to cover different health care needs unfairly puts “unfunded mandates” on small businesses instead of turning to other available resources to provide health services…

“Autism is not a physical body need,” she said. “It’s not even necessarily a mental-health need. It’s a whole range of things that require various physical therapies and health care therapies… Because the state education system can’t afford it, they’re pushing it off to the people who can.”

So if “setting the tone for the session” means preemptively chopping off a bunch of other legislators’ bills at the knees, then yes, you might find this ‘moratorium’ an acceptable bill for the House speaker pro tempore to sponsor. The rest of you should be able to understand easily why it raised eyebrows. We know about the other considerations that allegedly played into her decision, her contrary vote on Arveschoug-Bird and a few other bills. Those were well-known disagreements, but what Curry is trying to downplay–this belligerent legislation she’s going to sponsor with the GOP’s #1 Senate pickup hopeful–is a bigger part of this odd story than either she or the Colorado State Association of Health Underwriters would prefer to get into right now.

At the very least, we think Ellen Roberts’ strained description of “a good bill, and a bipartisan bill” to the Colorado Statesman is in need of two factual revisions.