May 05, 2011 10:43 PM UTC

Health Care Exchange Survives "Amycare" Onslaught; Will Amy?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Independent’s Joseph Boven reports:

A bill to create health insurance exchanges in Colorado passed out of the Senate today, becoming one of the few bills to make it through the fires of Tea Party and other conservative groups this year. While Republicans largely voted against the bill, it passed with no discussion in the Democratically controlled Senate and is now on its way to the governor’s desk.

The bill sponsored by Sen. Betty Boyd, D-Westminster, and House Majority Leader Amy Stephens, R-Monument, survived heavy opposition from “conservative grassroots organizations” and an attempt to add a poison pill amendment by Stephens on its way to final passage…

Tea Party and “grassroots conservative” activists said Wednesday that they would look at influencing Republican primaries and might begin working on recall efforts of Republicans who voted in favor of the bill.

While Stephens said during a press meeting Wednesday that she did not want to turn the bill into a Tea Party debate, she said that she encourages political involvement and conversation. She said she would have been remiss in her job to govern if she did not work to pass SB 200.

We said earlier that Rep. Amy Stephens, regardless of the ultimate fate of Senate Bill 200, did severe damage to her credibility by threatening a ‘poison pill’ “anti-Obamacare” amendment under pressure from conservative activists both in and outside of her district. This silly, potentially dealbreaking move infuriated everyone she had worked with on the bill, up to and including a rare flash of public anger from Gov. John Hickenlooper. Stephens’ work since then to pass the bill without her amendment confirms widespread rumors that she was severely rebuked by the many powerful interests backing SB-200–interests whose support, or lack thereof, matters much more to Rep. Stephens’ career than anything the “Tea Party” can do to her.

Unless we’re wrong about that, of course, and reportedly we’re going to find out.