(The Center Square) – The Colorado Senate Health and Human Services Committee has approved a new bill regarding vaccine policy.
After public comments were taken, the committee advanced the bill Thursday on a 6-3 vote. It now goes to the full Senate for debate.
Senate Bill 32 is from state Sens. Lindsey Daugherty and Kyle Mullica, both Democrats. During the committee hearing, Daugherty said this is about saving lives.
“For decades, our state’s immunization system has relied on stable federal guidance,” said Daugherty. “However, recent shifts have created confusion and uncertainty for both Coloradans and the dedicated health care professionals who administer vaccines.”
The bill comes after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has been making changes to vaccine policies. For example, HHS said on Jan. 5 that a change in the childhood immunization schedule “allows for more flexibility and choice, with less coercion.”
Calling this a disruption that threatens vaccine access, Daugherty also said it “creates the risk of inconsistency across providers,” while also weakening public confidence in a system designed to protect people.
As a result, Daugherty called SB 32 a necessary solution.
“It modernizes Colorado law to safeguard access to safe evidence-based vaccines, strengthens our immunization workforce, and ensures consistent guidance across all care settings,” said Daugherty. “It achieves this by allowing Colorado to explicitly rely on the trusted evidence-based guidelines from leading medical organizations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Physicians, and the American College of OBGYNs.”
If approved by the Legislature and signed into law, the bill would allow the departments of Public Health and Environment and Health Care Policy and Financing to continue purchasing, recommending, and conducting outreach for vaccines based on “established science, even if federal guidance is in flux.”
At the end of her opening remarks, Daugherty stressed what the bill does not do.
“It does not add any new vaccine mandates and fully maintains all existing medical and non-medical exemption policies,” said Daugherty. “In this uncertain national landscape, this bill is a necessary step to protect Coloradans’ vaccine access, and I am proud to bring it.”
Sen. Mullica agreed.
“We’ve seen the dysfunction that is coming out of Washington. We’ve seen the fact that they are arbitrarily changing schedules, arbitrarily changing policies that are impacting our states and are impacting our ability to protect the people of our state and take away the ability for the people of CO to have access to vaccines,” said Mulllica. “We have to make sure that in this state we rely on science, that we protect the people of Colorado and that people in this state continue to have access to those vaccines.”
Not everyone in the hearing was supportive of the bill.
During public comments, a woman identifying herself as a wife, mother and teacher told the committee that it is “trying to force insurance to cover more vaccines,” at the same time that she cannot get insurance to cover treatment for her “vaccine-injured children.”
Another woman identifying herself as a private citizen and parent from Greeley, Colorado, praised HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying he “aligned us with safer evidence-based approaches like Denmark’s, where children thrive with fewer shots and lower overload on their developing immune systems.”
