DENVER Tea party activists faced off with the traditional business-friendly wing of the Republican Party over a health-care bill Tuesday.
The business wing won.
House Majority Leader Amy Stephens, R-Monument, split with tea party activists and teamed with businesses and Democrats to advance the bill, which helps people find and buy health-insurance policies.
Stephens had been under pressure all year to back away from her Senate Bill 200, which she is sponsoring with a Senate Democrat. Tea party activists criticized it as a Colorado version of Obamacare, their term for the federal health-insurance bill that President Barack Obama signed last year.
There are people who have misunderstood and misrepresented the bill, to be sure, Stephens said.
The bill creates a health-insurance exchange a website where individuals can find and compare insurance policies. Small businesses would be able to use it to pool their buying power.
Stephens had tried to placate tea partiers by saying she would change the bill so it would only take effect if the state opted out of federal health care.
But she gave up that plan Tuesday and quickly rammed the bill through the House.
Tea party activists complained that Republicans arranged a hearing at the House Health and Environment Committee with only 12 hours notice. The panel passed the bill 9-4, and Stephens then took the unusual step of bringing her bill up in the full House just an hour later. It won final passage Wednesday morning in a 44-21 vote.
Locally, Rep. J. Paul Brown, R-Ignacio, voted no, and Rep. Don Coram, R-Montrose, voted yes.
The law Obama signed calls for exchanges and gives states a chance to set up their own before the federal government takes over the task. But Stephens has wanted to create a Colorado exchange since before the national bill passed.
The fracas has tea party leaders threatening to run a primary election against Stephens, a former Focus on the Family executive known as one of the Houses most outspoken conservatives.
But her reputation got her nowhere with activists like Nancy Rumfelt of Liberty Watch.
Senate Bill 200 is about the expansion of government, the intrusion of government into our lives, Rumfelt said at a news conference.
Lu Busse of the 9-12 Project Coalition, said she wasnt surprised businesses support SB 200.
Its their form of getting a bailout, she said.
Stephens assembled a group of business owners to make a pitch for SB 200, including Jim Noon of Centennial Container.
This is something small business has been looking for, for years. We need to be able to band together, Noon said.
Brown and three other Republicans voted against it in Tuesdays committee hearing.
I think theres a lot of frustration, not only in Colorado but also the United States as to the ballooning costs of health care, Brown said. The health exchange is a reaction to the threat of a national health exchange, and that is frustrating to me. I dont believe the state health exchange is the answer.
He would prefer to repeal mandates and regulations on health-insurance companies.
The rift between business Republicans and tea party activists has widened as the session approaches its end next week.
Tony Gagliardi, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, usually trains his fire on Democrats, but he took aim at the tea party in an opinion article last week.
Many of our Colorado legislators fear the wrath of Tea Party activists who have made support of Senate Bill 200 ... a needless ideological litmus test on which to oppose Republican lawmakers in primary elections, Gagliardi wrote.
Indeed, some activists want to oust Stephens and others they see as betraying their ideals.
We will be working on those, either through a primary, or in some cases people are talking about recall efforts, said Robert Rowland, publisher of The Patriot Today, a tea party newspaper.
Reach Joe Hanel at joeh@cortezjournal.com.