By Lauren Harvey, CDA Director of Government Relations
From the Journal of the Colorado Dental Association Winter 2025
With an election in 2024 and significant dental priorities and issues ahead for the 2025 state legislative session, we have plenty of notable updates and information to share.
In the 2024 state-level election, as expected, Democrats retained control of the Colorado state House and Senate and continue to have a “trifecta” with the Governorship also held by a Democrat. The Democrats in the House lost their supermajority status, however, they still retain a large majority in that chamber. In the Senate, Democrats hoped to snag a supermajority, however, they fell short of that goal but still retained a majority. Each party has chosen leaders in their respective chambers for the 2025 session. We are pleased that our “friends of dentistry” hold nine leadership positions in the House and six in the Senate. In addition, all members of the powerful Joint Budget Committee are friends of dentistry, which will be critical in the 2025 session.
The Colorado Dental Political Action Committee (CODPAC) and Colorado Dental Small Donor Committee (SDC) made many contributions to candidates in the 2024 election cycle, to further knowledge of and support for dental issues within the legislature. CODPAC and SDC funded 71 candidates and 96% of supported candidates won their elections. We are excited that so many legislators who support CDA’s priorities and positions on dental issues will be at the state Capitol in 2025.
It’s hard to believe the 2025 legislative session is just around the corner—the legislature convenes Jan. 8, 2025. Some key considerations for the 2025 legislative session include:
- Dental Practice Act Sunset Review – In Colorado, a sunset review essentially reviews all the laws that govern a profession in that profession’s practice act. In dentistry, this happens every 10 years. Sunset reviews are conducted by the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA) through a process that involves soliciting and receiving input from interested parties and stakeholders. The Dental Practice Act was up for sunset review in 2024, and the CDA has been heavily engaged in the process to promote changes to the Act that will best serve our member dentists and dental patients across the state. The DORA 2024 Sunset Review report (https://tinyurl.com/2kfwk8zu) was released Oct. 15 and will now move toward becoming legislation in the 2025 session. The CDA has identified key priority areas to be addressed in the upcoming legislation, including opposition to expansions of dental therapy proposed in the DORA report and ensuring that appropriate safety measures, qualifications and training requirements are in place for the field of dentistry. The CDA will be working diligently with legislators, stakeholders, our CDA members and subject matter experts to advocate for changes to the Dental Practice Act that are most important to our members and most impactful to the dental profession.
- State Budget and Medicaid – As we have shared with CDA members, the Governor’s proposed budget for State Fiscal Year 2025-26 requests to decrease several Medicaid dental rates including those that CDA had secured increases to just this past session. To be clear, the current rate adjustments are proposed, and nothing has been decided yet. If approved, those rate adjustments would be effective July 1, 2025. All remain in place at this time (cdaonline.org/MedicaidRates/). CDA has already started lobbying on this issue and will continue to be heavily engaged in advocating at the Joint Budget Committee, where the decision-making power now lies. We will fight to prevent these rate cuts that are critical to dental providers across the state to increase access to care for those most in need.
- Public and Private Insurance Policy Issues: CDA is tracking and engaged in several potential bills regarding Medicaid and policies of the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF), including issues such as the Recovery Audit Program (RAC) and other general process improvements in HCPF’s administration of Medicaid. CDA will also be tracking issues related to private insurance reforms and will engage in Dental Loss Ratio (DLR) rulemaking, as the state will release its first DLR data report in January 2025.
It will be a busy legislative session, with several of the prominent issues mentioned above and others that will undoubtedly arise as the session progresses. We look forward to providing additional updates as the session proceeds.
