May 03, 2017 02:45 PM UTC

Health Care Repeal in Colorado Dies Quietly

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• by: Colorado Pols

We’re still waiting to see if Congressional Republicans can muster enough votes to attempt to repeal Obamacare and replace it with Trumpcare 2.0. But here in Colorado, there is no such mystery surrounding GOP efforts to dismantle the Colorado Health Benefit Exchange.

As 9News reports:

Senate Bill Three was one of six bills highlighted in the opening day speech by Senate President Kevin Grantham (R-Cañon City)…

…The bill to repeal the state’s health benefit exchange is dead. It’s not unusual for a Republican bill to die at the hands of Democrats, but this one is simply being abandoned. We wanted to ask the Senate leadership or Sen. Jim Smallwood why this priority has gone unprioritized, but no one wanted to talk.

Sources around the Capitol have suggested this bill essentially died when Republicans in Washington, D.C. could not agree on a way to repeal Obamacare.

Colorado Republicans have had a heck of a time keeping their talking points straight on why they would want to eliminate the state health exchange, which has been kicked down the road to next week just about every week in the last month (9News includes the sequential images of SB-3 getting booted). Senator Jim Smallwood of Parker was charged with promoting this legislative turd, which was first heard in committee on Feb. 7 and then not again until April 6.

Smallwood once laughably said that his bill had “nothing to do” with partisan rancor over Obamacare. He was half-right on that statement; as it turned out, even Republican legislators wanted nothing to do with it.