A special session of the Colorado General Assembly will is expected to take place the week of Aug. 18, multiple sources have told Colorado Politics.

The session will look at how the recently enacted federal budget bill will impact Coloradans on health issues, and may address other issues.

On Friday, legislators held an “informal meeting” of the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which drew a dozen lawmakers and dozens of lobbyists, journalists and other interested parties to the Capitol to hear what the state will face in changes to Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The meeting wasn’t announced on the legislature’s website; the General Assembly cut funding for many interim committees during the 2025 session due to budget constraints.

Three Republican senators, all members of the health committee, also attended, along with three House Democrats who sit on that chamber’s Health and Human Services Committee.

The look at how the federal budget bill will impact Colorado is among the steps lawmakers are taking in preparation for the special session.

As for the special session, as estimated in 2023, it likely will cost just over $24,000 per day. That doesn’t include per diem costs that all 100 lawmakers are entitled to claim when meeting at the Capitol.

Next week, the executive committee of the Legislative Council, the six-member group of legislative leaders, is expected to discuss the special session and meet with state economists, including from the governor’s office, to go over the numbers. That’s the first step in figuring out how much the legislature will have to cut out of the 2025-26, current fiscal year budget.

An estimate of $700 million, tied primarily to federal changes in tax policy that impacts state revenue, is expected to be on the agenda.

Friday’s meeting focused on health care changes, most of which legislators aren’t going to have to deal with until the 2026-27 budget.

Dawn Joyce, senior vice president for Impact Health Policy Partners, discussed the changes to Medicaid, ACA and SNAP.

The federal budget bill slashes Medicaid spending nationwide by $900 billion over 10 years through new restrictions on eligibility, financing and payment, with states now responsible for shouldering much more of the costs for some of those services.

The law reduces access to SNAP and increases the state share of costs, and for the ACA, eligibility will be narrowed for premium tax credits, along with increasing documentation requirements.

The federal deficit will jump by $3.4 trillion over the same time period, Joyce said, and by 2034 the number of uninsured will increase by 10 million due to loss of Medicaid coverage and by 15 million from changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.

Changes to Medicaid will come in three categories: eligibility and coverage, state financing and administration and health care provider reimbursement.

For Colorado, the biggest impacts will come from a cap on provider taxes (which help fund the state’s share on Medicaid), eligibility changes, work requirements, more frequent eligibility redeterminations and increased uncompensated care.

Joyce noted that a moratorium on new or increased provider taxes is already in effect. Existing provider taxes will be capped at 3.5%.

Colorado’s chief provider tax is the Colorado Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise (CHASE), which brings in $3.6 billion per year and helps to insure 427,000 Coloradans. CHASE, formerly the hospital provider fee, is collected from hospitals, matched with federal dollars and then redistributed to hospitals based on Medicaid utilization and uncompensated care.

A reduction in CHASE between 2026 and 2032, from 6% to 3.5%, would result in a $10.4 billion loss just for Colorado.

The state will also have to bear more of the burden for administrative and other costs, including requiring a higher co-pay for those enrolled through the Medicaid expansion.

There is a stopgap for rural health care, a $50 billion fund over five years, known as the rural health transformation fund that is intended to protect rural hospitals, although that’s about one-third of what rural hospitals and healthcare providers are expected to lose from Medicaid cuts under the federal budget bill.

Among the impacts to the ACA is limited eligibility for the subsidies currently provided for ACA-affiliated health insurance, provided through Connect for Health Colorado. The law also prohibits green card holders (lawful permanent residents) from enrolling in subsidized insurance over the next five years, beginning in 2026, and ends any subsidy for refugees, asylum seekers, survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking with pending or approved lawful status, valid visa holders and people with “temporary protected status,” beginning in 2027.

Changes in SNAP include modifications to work requirements for those without dependents under the age of 14 (previously it was dependents under 18), and removes exemptions for the homeless, veterans or those who have aged out of foster care.