Supporters of ColoradoCare, a ballot measure that would provide health care coverage to everyone in the state, said Tuesday that their system could operate for at least nine years without running a deficit.

The new analysis from the campaign was a response to a report released this month by the independent Colorado Health Institute that showed ColoradoCare operating in the red from the first year on. In its analysis, the pro-ColoradoCare campaign projected that the system could go until 2028 before expenses outweigh revenue. By then, according to the campaign’s analysis, ColoradoCare would be sitting on a nearly $16 billion surplus accrued in previous years.

“ColoradoCare, Amendment 69, will operate in the black,” former state Sen. Jeanne Nicholson, a supporter of the measure, said at a Tuesday news conference.

Unless a person opts to pay extra for a private plan or is already on another government plan — like Medicare — ColoradoCare would pick up the bill for any health care expenses incurred by a Colorado resident.

A new payroll tax on workers and employers would provide the bulk of the money for the system. But money from the federal government would also make up a significant chunk, and therein lies the dispute about ColoradoCare’s fortunes.

The Colorado Health Institute predicts that if ColoradoCare passes, the federal government will cut back on some of the matching health care funds it currently gives the state, while supporters of ColoradoCare say the federal government won’t. The reasons get deep into the intricacies of health care financing — would the federal government, for instance, continue giving Colorado money meant to help hospitals make up for losses serving Medicaid patients if ColoradoCare pays those hospitals more than Medicaid does? — but those fine details amount to billions of dollars a year.

“It’s a pretty safe prediction based on precedent that this funding is going to be there,” said Owen Perkins, a spokesman for the pro-ColoradoCare campaign.

But analysts at the Colorado Health Institute aren’t so sure. Without the full federal funding, the institute projects that ColoradoCare would start out $253 million in the red in 2019, its first year, and the deficit would grow to nearly $8 billion by 2028.

“Our findings are sound,” Michele Lueck, the president and CEO of the Colorado Health Institute said in a statement. “We have identified a structural gap in the financing of ColoradoCare. Simply put, revenue will not cover expenses.”

But ColoradoCare’s supporters say they built a safety mechanism into the measure should the federal funding disappear. If the interim board members appointed to get the system up and running decide that it’s not fiscally sound, they can shut it down.

“We won’t go recklessly forward,” Perkins said.