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Al Rosenthal: Vote ‘no’ letter was false







The letter “Vote ‘no’ on Amendment 69,” which ran in the Oct. 24 issue of Steamboat Today, is a letter of fear and speculation disguised as certainty.

Millions of dollars have poured into Colorado from the health insurance conglomerates through their front group, Coloradans for Coloradans, and Americans for Prosperity (a Koch Brothers affiliated group) to get us to think like this letter. They want to preserve the vast profits they would lose if Amendment 69 passes to lead the way for other states.

The letter contains not a shred of truth to it, except that “nothing is free” — that is, if you discount the air we breathe or the water we fish or swim in. ColoradoCare is not free.  Everyone pays and everyone is in.



What ColoradoCare is, however, is free at the point of delivery. Through what we pay in our taxes that would be less than premiums now — even before the 20 to 40 percent increases they are extracting from us next year — Coloradans will get health care in return when they need it without the threat of medical bankruptcy.

Medicare works this way. It has been a remarkably successful American health care system, covering its entire population at far less cost than private insurance has ever done.



The idea that physicians will flee the state is simply fiction. They did not flee the Canadian province of Saskatchewan when it went to universal care in the 1960s. They came to embrace it and the entire country followed Saskatchewan’s lead, and that’s why I am voting “yes” on 69.

Al Rosenthal

Steamboat Springs


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