There’s a terrible myth that has captured the minds of most right-wing politicians in Colorado and and has even been perpetuated in guest commentaries in this paper. The myth is that, somehow, ensuring that sick kids, people with disabilities and low-income women have access to healthcare is the reason our state budget faces annual challenges. Not the billions we give away in tax breaks every single year to special interests, or the fact that we have some of the lowest corporate income taxes in the entire country. Nor the fact that big corporations are allowed to stash their profits in offshore tax shelters to avoid paying their fair share. Conservatives will have you ignore all of those actual budget-busters in order to point the finger at Medicaid recipients – working families who are struggling to make ends meet.

A few years ago, Colorado embraced the federal Affordable Care Act’s goal of dramatically reducing the number of uninsured Americans. A combination of market-based reforms like Connect for Health Colorado, which has increased access to private coverage and reduced the premium cost for thousands of Coloradans, and an expansion of eligibility to join the state’s Medicaid insurance program, has resulted in a historic drop in the number of uninsured in this state. Today, Colorado has one of the lowest uninsured rates in the nation.

The success of “Obamacare” in Colorado is deeply frustrating to the law’s far-right opponents. Tremendous efforts have been made in Colorado to blame the expansion of health coverage, especially the growth of residents covered by Medicaid, as a “budget buster.” Right-wing politicians like state Sen. Laura Woods of Arvada have openly called for rolling back eligibility for Medicaid, which would throw thousands of Coloradans off the rolls and reverse the gains made in health coverage. Right-wing pundits claim that expanding access to coverage has “over-promised social welfare entitlements which are now devouring everything else,” and refuse to discuss real solutions due to their ideological obsession with “small government.”

But the facts simply don’t back their claims up. The truth is, less than 1 percent of Medicaid spending from the state’s General Fund is spent on new patients who qualified for Medicaid due to expanding eligibility. The overwhelming majority of funding for the expansion of Medicaid coverage comes from the federal government, not the state budget. That will be true even after the state begins to pick up slightly more of the tab in future years as planned.

And what does Colorado get in return? Forty-four percent of Medicaid enrollees are children, most of whom would otherwise be forced to go uninsured. Eleven percent of Medicaid enrollees are people with disabilities and elderly folks. Seniors and people with disabilities account for an enormous percentage of Medicaid spending, and would directly suffer from any cutbacks – forcing them into homelessness or to rely on their children for care and support. What’s more, Colorado’s economy directly benefits on the order of billions of dollars every year due to the economic activity spurred by Medicaid coverage.

With so many conflicting limitations on revenues and spending, Colorado has one of the most complicated and difficult budgeting processes of any state in America. Each year the General Assembly operates under severe constraints as we attempt to provide for the state’s essential services with available revenue, while observing harsh and arbitrary limits imposed by the decades-old Taxpayer Bill of Rights. This results in an annual struggle to meet basic obligations to protect the health and welfare of the residents of this state.

The greatest threat to Colorado’s long-term fiscal stability is not Medicaid, but the “Gordian knot” of revenue restrictions like TABOR that prevent our elected officials from carrying out their most basic responsibilities. Sadly, an attempt to loosen TABOR’s grip on the state was shelved due to the highly unpredictable political climate in this election year. Instead of throwing kids, the elderly, and people with disabilities off the health coverage rolls for no good reason, let’s get serious about addressing the bad ideas of decades past in our state’s constitution like TABOR – impediments that prevent today’s lawmakers from doing their jobs and give opportunists and charlatans the ability to protect giveaways for special interests and point the finger at people who are facing poverty, illness, and in many cases, homelessness.