Hello Caregiver Advocates!
772 signatures. 693 supporters. 228 from 1,000.
I want to tell you something about those numbers before I tell you about June 4.
543 of those signatures - 70% - came through Change.org promotions. 130 through email. 43 from Facebook. 7 from LinkedIn. 31 from unknown sources.
18 came from no platform at all. No algorithm. No promotion. People who found this petition on their own and stayed with it.
18 organic signatures in a campaign with no paid staff and no ad budget is evidence that the argument travels when it reaches the right people. I am asking you - today, before you close this update - to be one of those people for someone else. Share the argument, not just the link.
Every name on this petition is evidence I carry into the room.
I was in Room 220 on June 4.
The floors of the Colorado State Capitol are white marble. Cold. Institutional. But if you look closer - at the wainscoting, the walls, the grand columns - the stone changes. Rose onyx. Quarried in 1893 near Beulah, Colorado. The architects used all of it. The entire world supply was exhausted constructing this one building.
My mother's name is Rose. She is in the walls.
I sat in the first chair of the left wing of the Old Supreme Court Chamber - one registered volunteer lobbyist who had decided the first meeting was not the moment to speak - and I thought about that.
Here is what the Commission heard on June 4.
The Legislative Council presented the state of Medicaid in Colorado. The primary structural driver of cost pressure is elder care - chronic illness compounding across years, generating costs that TABOR's growth constraints cannot match. No work requirement aimed at working-age adults addresses this. The fiscal architecture problem is built into Colorado's constitution, and it does not flex when an aging population generates costs that exceed its projections.
At the same time, H.R. 1 has added a $57 million annual administrative burden to Colorado's Medicaid system - the cost of enforcing work requirement compliance, documentation, appeals, and eligibility reviews. That is 52 times the $1.1 million in projected savings from the caregiver hour cap. The federal government will not fully cover those costs. Colorado is being asked to build a compliance infrastructure to address a fraud problem that represents a fraction of a percent of spending, while the actual fiscal pressure goes unaddressed.
The Colorado CARE Act addresses the correct pressure point. Zero administrative cost. $23 to $38 million in projected net savings using HCPF's own data. One documented conversation before a caregiver's employment arrangement changes.
My brief - the 33-person calculation - was on record before the meeting. Nobody has read it yet. I am not concerned. Work gets through even when it hasn't been read yet.
Rose doesn't remember what her caregivers did. She doesn't remember the visit, the conversation, the specific kindness extended across an ordinary afternoon. But when that person comes back into the room, something in her recognizes the feeling. The warmth is stored somewhere the disease cannot reach.
Kindness gets through even when the memory doesn't.
The brief is in the room. The argument is in the room. The feeling of someone doing the work before the crisis fully landed - that is already there.
Share this petition today. One person. The argument, not just the link.
Read and Listen to the Podcast for Dispatch Three - "The Storm Finds It Waiting": [https://open.substack.com/pub/therevenueneutralcaregiver/p/the-long-game-dispatch-3?r=6a52ih&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true]
Sign or share here: https://c.org/WjGpN6TYnB
772 signatures. 228 from 1,000.
The storm found it waiting. Dispatch Four will bring them closer.
Kindly and Gratefully,
- Mark Fukae Director of Advocacy, Professionals Who Care Founder, CASI - Caregiver Advocacy Support Initiative Colorado Registered Volunteer Lobbyist mark_fukae@casiadvocacy.org | casiadvocacy.org