Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Pulse Poll topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Colorado Health Foundation poll: health care affordability spikes; many Coloradans postponing care
Summary
A statewide Colorado Health Foundation survey of 2,300+ residents found rising concern about the cost of health care — the largest year‑over‑year increase — and that tens of percent of respondents postponed medical or dental care, with disproportionate impacts on Medicaid members and the uninsured.
A Colorado Health Foundation (CHF) presentation to the House Human Services Committee on Feb. 4 summarized results from the foundation’s 2025 PULSE poll and warned that health‑care affordability has jumped sharply in public concern.
“These data provide a glimpse into the minds of Coloradans at a very specific moment in time,” Alexis Waitman, CHF senior government affairs manager, told the committee. The multimodal survey, conducted April 19–May 18, 2025, included more than 2,300 Coloradans and was weighted to match statewide demographics, Waitman said.
The poll found that, for the first time since the survey began in 2020, a free‑response question produced “government and politics” as the most‑cited top issue. When respondents were prompted on specific problems, cost‑related issues dominated: rising cost of living, housing affordability and the cost of health care were among the top concerns. Waitman told legislators the largest year‑over‑year increase from 2024 to 2025 was in the perceived challenge of health‑care costs.
The poll also measured behaviors tied to affordability: 30% of respondents reported postponing necessary medical care in the prior 12 months, 33% delayed dental care, 19% reported having reduced work hours, 8% said they had been laid off, and 12% reported skipping meals because they could not afford food.
Waitman emphasized uneven impacts across coverage types. “We see that 76 percent of Health First members report that they are really struggling to get by financially and 70 percent of uninsured Coloradans are struggling,” she said, using CHF’s shorthand for Colorado’s Medicaid population. The foundation reported that Medicaid members and the uninsured reported much higher rates of postponing medical, dental and mental‑health care than the general population.
The poll captured mental‑health strain as well: more than half of respondents (56%) said they had experienced anxiety, depression, loneliness or stress during the past year, with higher rates among certain demographic groups identified in CHF’s subgroup analyses.
Committee members questioned sampling and weighting. Waitman said CHF works with bipartisan polling firms, intentionally oversamples underrepresented groups and weights results to reflect Colorado’s population; she offered to circulate the full slide deck and technical poll memo to the committee.
The committee did not take action on the poll itself. Members requested follow‑up material, including the full methodology and regional or subgroup breakdowns, and CHF offered to provide additional data and spot polling in 2026 where requested.
