Medicaid benefits that pay for people with disabilities to go on community outings and cover household cleaning, cooking and laundry are the latest services facing cuts as Colorado deals with a major budget shortage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A governor-appointed board that sets rules for the state Medicaid program voted 6-1 Friday to preliminarily approve the cuts, despite rejecting other cuts requested by Medicaid officials this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The federal-state health insurance program will save $1.2 million in state money this year and $10 million next year by placing stricter caps on the number of hours that caregivers are paid to take people on outings through a benefit called \u201ccommunity connector.\u201d Capping the hours allowed for \u201chomemaker\u201d services, which include cooking and cleaning, will save Medicaid $2.6 million state funds.<\/p>\n
The community connector program in particular has ballooned \u2014\u00a0the cost of the program jumped by 1,178% since 2018, to about $67 million per year from about $5 million per year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Part of the growth is because people are using it incorrectly, Medicaid officials said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The benefit is intended to take people with disabilities on outings to learn to ride public transportation, grocery shop or volunteer at a library. Yet requests have included a 3-year-old needing 20 hours per week to improve social skills and a 16-year-old asking for 20 hours per week to deal with a screen addiction, said Bonnie Silva, director of the state health care department\u2019s Office of Community Living.<\/p>\n
In some cases, people are using the benefit to go to restaurants or the movies, which are not outings to \u201cengage in their community\u201d as the program is meant to do, Silva said. The program is not intended to pay for duties that are \u201ctypical parental responsibility,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Board members who supported the department\u2019s emergency rule change said they wanted to keep the benefits afloat for the long term, which would require reining in the spending. Laura Carroll, the head of the volunteer Medical Services Board, was the only no vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The vote Friday came at the end of a nearly five-hour meeting, which included emotional testimony from numerous parents who gave up working outside the home when they had children with severe disabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Briana Hayes, the mother of a 4-year-old girl with a genetic disorder and multiple health issues, did her own math and determined the state would not save money, at least in her daughter\u2019s case.<\/p>\n
Hayes\u2019 daughter receives $8,000 in services per month so that she can live at home, including 10 hours to go on community outings, 31 hours for nursing care and a few hours of homemaker services, which are for cleaning, laundry and meal preparation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Cuts to those benefits will mean that Hayes \u201cwould have to get a job outside the home\u201d and would place her daughter in daytime care, which costs $57 per hour, she said. The monthly cost for Medicaid would jump to $11,500 from the current $8,000, Hayes said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI urge you to object to this rule in favor of young kids with disabilities,\u201d Hayes told the board.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Others said the cuts were unfair in particular to single parents and argued that it\u2019s not cost-effective to cut services that help people live at home instead of in institutions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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A Medicaid chart presented to the Colorado Medical Services Board on Feb. 13, 2026, shows that the cost of the community connector program has gone up 1,178% and the number of participants 510% since 2018. (Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing)<\/p>\n
The vote was the most recent in several medical board, legislative and Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing meetings to attempt to trim Medicaid costs, which now make up one-third of the state budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In January, the medical board refused to even make a motion<\/a> to approve a previous department request for cuts, another emergency rule change that would have meant a 10% rate cut for parents who are providing round-the-clock care to adult children with disabilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n Then, after hours of tearful testimony, the legislature\u2019s Joint Budget Committee refused to cap the number <\/a>of hours family caregivers could bill for care or reduce their hourly benefit rate to match what is allowed for group homes.\u00a0<\/p>\n