Hilltop Presents at Colorado’s Centennial Care Choices Program Panel

The Hilltop Institute’s executive director, Chuck Milligan, gave a presentation on benefit design on August 4, 2008, before the Colorado Centennial Care Choices Program Panel, a governor-appointed expert panel charged with gathering information on the design, benefits, and costs of a Value Benefit Plan for the people of Colorado. Milligan discussed the concept of minimum benefits (a state’s determination of what constitutes “being insured”) and policy implications, such as the balance between a given state’s determination of where to strike a balance between its role to protect its citizens, and its role to respect individual liberty/autonomy to purchase services in the market; the balance between coverage by private insurance and government programs that wrap around those benefits; and the balance between covering more people with leaner benefits, or fewer people with more comprehensive benefits. Milligan then presented alternatives utilized by different states to provide benefits to their uninsured citizens.

August 5, 2008