Toxic Twins Part 2: TABOR Caused Sharp Declines in Health Care Funding

Our latest report, co-authored with the Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, details TABOR’s impact on education, communities, health, and transportation infrastructure. This post highlights some of our findings regarding TABOR’s disastrous effects on public health programs in Colorado.

In Colorado, TABOR greatly compromised a critical part of the public safety net – health care services. From 1992 to 2005, TABOR-induced shortfalls forced deep cuts in health care services throughout Colorado. The result:

• Between 1992 and 2004, the share of lower income children with no health insurance doubled from 16 to 32 percent, making Colorado the worst in the nation by this measure.
  


• In 2002, the state could no longer afford basic vaccines and had to suspend the requirement that all students be vaccinated against common diseases such as tetanus, diphtheria, and whooping cough.
  


• In 2003, budget restrictions forced the state to temporarily stop the enrollment of children in the children’s health program and suspend the prenatal program.

TABOR had numerous adverse effects on health care and other public services in Colorado. For more detail, please click here to view the entire report.

Editor’s note: This post is the second in a series about the sharp declines in Colorado’s core public services that occurred as a result of the TABOR amendment. There will be two future posts: The next post will cover TABOR’s effects on transportation infrastructure; the final post will discuss economic growth in Colorado during the period in which TABOR was active.