Coloradans have always been pioneers. With an innovative spirit, we’ve had the courage to overcome adversity, seize opportunity, and turn bold visions into reality. Today, with ColoradoCare, we’re on the frontier of a health care revolution.

We all know our health care system is broken. Millions of Coloradans face debt and bankruptcy from high medical costs. Health insurance premiums are forecast to rise an average of 20.4 percent next year, with some spiking as much as 42 percent. And there’s no end in sight to these rate hikes. Year after year, status quo health insurers have managed to score record profits by finding ways to reduce payments to providers and ways to limit patient care. UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley took home a cool $66 million in 2014. Meanwhile, more than 800,000 Colorado citizens are underinsured. And over 350,000 of us have no health insurance at all.

We do not have to accept the abuse. There is a better way.

With ColoradoCare, priorities in health insurance shift from profit for the few and the isolated treatment of illness to long-term public health and wellness. Providers are incentivized to keep patients healthy and out of the hospital. Improved health lowers spending and a healthy workforce yields a robust economy. Everyone wins.

By taking the profit motive out of health care and streamlining administrative costs, ColoradoCare saves $4.5 billion in annual expenses compared to the current corporate insurance model. This savings enables better care at a lower cost to residents, businesses and cities. Residents are free to choose any provider in the state. There are no deductibles, no insurance premiums and no co-pays for primary and preventive care. Health insurance funds stay in Colorado to create local jobs and a stronger economy.

Most important, 100 percent of Coloradans will be covered. Crippling medical debt and bankruptcy from medical bills will cease to exist.

To protect their profits, private insurers, hospitals, big pharma and other major players in the price-gouging status quo health care system are pouring millions of dollars into the opposition campaign. Hiding behind fake grass-roots (“astroturf”) organizations like “Coloradans for Coloradans,” these private interests are spreading fear and lies to scare voters away from ColoradoCare. Do not be fooled. No matter how many times a lie is repeated, it is still a lie.

ColoradoCare is not risky. By law, to opt out of the Affordable Care Act, we have to show the federal government that ColoradoCare will be a fiscally sustainable system that provides benefits as good as or better than a silver plan on the ACA Exchange. ColoradoCare will pass this test with flying colors.

At $25 billion a year, ColoradoCare is expensive; but it replaces our existing profit-based insurance system, which costs Coloradans $30 billion a year. The vast majority of residents see substantial savings under ColoradoCare.

The 21-member ColoradoCare board will be the most accountable health care governance in the country. Meetings will be open to the public, and board members are elected by Coloradans. Compare this to the status quo, where we have no say in who governs our health insurance, where corporate board members are often out-of-state business people who have no background in health care, where profit is prioritized over health, and where there’s zero accountability to the people of Colorado.

Colorado has suffered the tyranny of private insurance for long enough.

Do we really trust private insurers to dictate the terms of our health care to us, or are we ready to shake off the abuse, stand up, and take back our health care to create a system that’s owned by and operated for the people of Colorado?

Just as we have done many times in the past, it’s time again for Coloradans to gaze out over the inviting frontier before us, choose courage over cowardice, and make history.

Join your Colorado neighbors in the campaign for universal health care and vote “yes” on Amendment 69, ColoradoCare, on your November ballot.

Irene Aguilar, M.D., is a Colorado state senator and a member of the Board of Directors at Denver Health.

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