It was hot outside and the air conditioning system was acting up when The Lewin Group, a company doing independent analysis for Colorado's Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform, gave its preliminary report on the reform proposals submitted to the commission.

The commission's chair, Bill Lindsay, interrupted the consultants to question their findings. Lindsay said it surprised him that the Colorado Health Services Program would give Coloradans better coverage than they now have - and at the same time save more than $1.6 billion.

It is counterintuitive that covering everyone would cost less.

That proposal was submitted by Health Care for All Colorado and endorsed by the Colorado Nurses Association. It's one of four proposals out of 31 submitted that the commission chose for outside, independent analysis. It proposes private health care through a publicly funded system. A single risk pool keeps costs low and guarantees comprehensive coverage.

The other three proposals keep in place our current system's private insurance companies. Two include mandates that every Coloradan buy private insurance. They also seek to shore up our tattered safety nets for the increasing number of Americans who are uninsured (16 percent) and underinsured (29 percent). The other proposals add cost and give less coverage.

Lewin Group's lead analyst explained to the commissioners that single-payer systems enjoy significant savings, beginning with lower administrative costs. That's not just hoping or theoretical. Every other industrialized nation on Earth has guaranteed universal health care for their citizens. They have equal or better outcomes overall and save money, spending a smaller percentage of their GDP and family budgets on health care. They have found that universal health care is good for families and businesses.

True, those systems are human and imperfect. But there are now enough rigorous international studies that we Americans cannot fool ourselves any longer. Our system is broken. Although we have pockets of medical greatness, comparative studies show that ours is not the best health care in the world.

Would such a single-payer system be workable in a single state? If history is a guide, yes. Single payer worked in a single province, Saskatchewan, where Canadian Medicare began.

The fear that a single-payer system would attract sick people from all over the country is far more an indictment of the current U.S. system than of our proposal. It's just as likely that such a proposal would attract progressive corporations, who currently pay an average of 8 percent to 10 percent to cover their employees' health care. That's double the proposed 4 percent payroll tax for the Colorado Health Services Program, which would bill out-of-staters.

Although the Colorado Health Services Plan calls for a 6 percent income tax to pay for health care for all, most Coloradans would pay less because they would trade paying premiums and high deductibles for a lower health-care tax.

Would Coloradans vote for such a tax? That depends partly upon what they now spend on health care. We believe that Coloradans would choose to pay 6 percent of their salary for better coverage for all and never again having to worry about a medically caused bankruptcy.

How about rationing? American insurance companies ration care. Prior authorizations, limiting benefits and denials are examples of rationing under our current system. Europeans don't have to worry about this. In fact, Europeans don't worry about health care in general. A Belgian woman recently admitted to us that she had not realized that her country had public, universal health coverage. She just knew that if she ever got sick she'd be cared for.

We hope that Rocky Mountain News readers will take the time to learn more about this issue, and join in the conversation.

All the Blue Ribbon Commission's meetings are public. Check their schedules at www.colorado.gov/208commission.

Fran Ricker is executive director of the Colorado Nurses Association. Kristen Hannum is program administrator for Health Care for All Colorado.