Colorado could lose thousands of jobs and see a more than $1 billion hit to the economy if Republicans pass cuts to anti-poverty spending through the public health program Medicaid and the nutrition program known as SNAP, according to a newly released study.
Colorado could lose 14,000 jobs in 2026. And the state's gross domestic product could shrink by almost $1.6 billion. The loss in state and local taxes could be $106 million next year.
Nationally the report from the Commonwealth Fund and the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health puts the nationwide figure at one million jobs lost in 2026 alone.
The budget blueprint recently passed by the House of Representatives would cut funding allocated by the committees responsible for Medicaid and SNAP benefits by more than $1 trillion. That blueprint doesn't direct any specific cuts, but experts believe the only way reductions of that size could be achieved would be through slashing those two programs.
“Medicaid and SNAP programs are not just designed to strengthen individual health and nutrition — they support the economic well-being of communities and businesses nationwide,” said Leighton Ku, the report’s lead author and director of the Center for Health Policy Research and professor of health policy and management at GWU’s Milken Institute School.
“Cuts of this magnitude will not be harmless,” he said. “In fact, such drastic reductions would harm millions of families and also trigger widespread economic instability and major job losses.”
The report used an economic modeling system to project the effects of cutbacks on state economies, employment, and taxes.
Rural hospitals, many operating on tight margins, could be at risk of closing their doors if deep cuts happen. And that would have a ripple effect, according to Michelle Mills, CEO of the Colorado Rural Health Center. She noted 21 hospitals in rural Colorado are operating in the red right now, in a recent interview.
“The reason why that's really important is just because healthcare tends to be one of the top three employers in a rural community, and therefore an economic driver for the community as well,” she said.
John Daley/CPR News
Michelle Mills is CEO of Colorado Rural Health Center, a nonprofit that supports health care services in the state's rural regions. Their offices are located in Aurora, Colo.
Others said severe cuts will make it harder for families to live in the state’s less populated areas.
“My current hospital has the only Labor and Delivery unit for 60 miles in either direction,” said Dr. Mandy Swanson, a family physician from Delta, on the western Slope, in a recent call with reporters. “Already, hospitals are struggling to keep L and D open to safely take care of women and children…For every 15 minutes a woman has to drive to get adequate care, the risk to her life and the life of her baby are more and more at risk. Cuts to Medicaid will ensure that more hospitals close down or don’t provide maternity care. Real people will die.”
Big programs, with hundreds of thousands of Coloradans enrolled
Medicaid is an $880 billion-a-year state-federal program, covering 83 million Americans. It’s a cornerstone of America’s healthcare system, providing health coverage to millions of people. That includes seniors, people with disabilities, low-income Americans, pregnant women, adults, and children.
Colorado’s Medicaid program, known as Health First Colorado, covers around 1.2 million people, about a fifth of the state’s population. That’s according to the latest data from the agency. They depend on it for everything from nursing home care and doctor checkups to preventive care and ER visits.
SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The anti-hunger program helps put food on the table, allowing low-income families to supplement their budget on groceries, so “they can afford the nutritious food essential to health and well-being,” according to the agency website.
Roughly 584,500 Colorado residents, or about one in 10 people, get assistance, through SNAP, according to a factsheet from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It's a nonpartisan research institute that advances federal and state policies to help build a nation where everyone “has the resources they need to thrive and share in the nation’s prosperity,” according to its website.
The Republican Perspective
Congressional Republicans want to extend existing tax cuts, costing as much as $4.5 trillion.
Some have painted what they describe as mismanagement of Colorado’s administration of Medicaid, saying Gov. Jared Polis and Colorado Democrats need to fix in-state Medicaid programs before casting blame on the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress.
“We know that there is fraud, waste and abuse in the system that we have to be able to find so that we can actually save Medicaid for the vulnerable populations who need it most.” said Rep. Gabe Evans, who represents Colorado’s 8th Congressional district in the northern Front Range.
A spokesperson for Evans said, via email, that House and Senate leaders met Tuesday and will release updated budget numbers in a few weeks.
Others have talked about making the program more efficient.
“As a general matter, I do believe that we should be looking at something like having some sort of a work requirement (for Medicaid),” said Rep. Jeff Hurd. The Republican represents the 3rd Congressional district, which spans western and southern Colorado. He made the comments during a telephone town hall on March 11. “We need to make sure that we use those Medicaid dollars effectively. If you look at the expansion in Medicaid spending in our country, it's certainly exploded in part because of the (Affordable Care Act) expansion.”
His chief of staff said in a call with CPR that Rep. Hurd does not support cuts to Medicaid.
But many health policy groups and experts view Medicaid work requirements as unrealistic, becoming just a backdoor way to drop people from the program. An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found it could cost 36 million Americans their health coverage.
“Work requirements strip health coverage from people with low incomes — most of whom are already meeting or exempt from the requirements — leading to gaps in care that damage their health and financial security and make it harder for them to find or keep a job,” it wrote, citing research published in the New England Journal of Medicine and Health Affairs.
“I think there’s groups out there that are trying to scare people, frankly for their own political purposes, to try and scare people into believing that there’s going to be all these massive Medicaid cuts,” said Republican Rep. Jeff Crank, who represents the 5th district, which includes Colorado Springs. He made the comments earlier this month on Fox 21. “And that hasn’t been the case, that’s not the intention of anybody here, is to cut people off of Medicaid.”
President Donald Trump has said he wouldn’t cut Medicaid benefits, telling reporters “We’re not going to touch it.”
Policy choices will get spelled out in coming legislation. The House budget resolution calls for cutting at least $880 billion over the next ten years for programs under the jurisdiction of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and at least $230 billion for programs under the House Agriculture Committee, according to the Commonwealth Fund report.
Republicans have said the claim that all of the $880 billion in cuts will come from Medicaid is inaccurate, that the figure may not be the final number and the Senate hasn’t yet voted on the bill.
Reporting earlier this month from KFF Health News and Politifact Healthcheck found it was “likely impossible” Republicans, who control both Houses of Congress and the White, could cut $880 billion from the federal budget without axing Medicaid.
House Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN that cutting fraud, waste, and abuse would result in “part of the savings” motivating the changes. He said the government loses $50 billion a year in Medicaid payments “just in fraud alone.” But the site said the Speaker conflated “fraud” with “improper payments,” that the system is not designed to measure if improper payments were made fraudulently, and that $50 billion would still be a relative drop in the bucket compared to the $880 billion total.
All four Colorado Republican House members voted in favor of advancing the budget resolution, which is critical to approving key parts of President Trump’s legislative priorities. The state’s four Democratic members voted against it.
About the groups who published the report
The Commonwealth Fund is a U.S. foundation; its mission is “to promote a high-performing, equitable health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society’s most vulnerable.”
The George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health is located in Washington, D.C.
