Monthly Archives: June 2012

Opinion: Project Health Colorado a forum outside the fray

By Christie McElhinney Is health care in Colorado working? Should every child have health insurance? Do you feel like you have a say in your health care? You probably have seen or heard these questions on TV, radio, in newspapers, on websites or even on a few billboards and passing buses. This campaign – Project Health Colorado – is a public forum that provides Coloradans with the opportunity to ask questions and get information about health coverage and care in our state, and offers the opportunity to be part of a positive conversation about our health care system outside the political fray….

Want better health outcomes? Invest in education

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon AURORA Investments in education would do far more to drive down health care costs than simply reforming the health care system, an expert on social determinants of health said Friday during a visit to Denver. If there was one thing that modern medicine could do to improve health outcomes, it would be to solve the high school dropout problem, said Dr. Steven Woolf, of the Center for Human Needs at Virginia Commonwealth University. Surveys show most people believe that hospitals or access to doctors determines how healthy people are. But, in fact, Woolf and his colleagues…

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper – Aspen talk – Endorses Bloomberg soda war

Prostate test cost-benefit clash gets to heart of health care debate

By Diane Carman Peering into the controversy over routine use of the blood test to screen for the prostate-specific antigen is like falling down, down, down into the dark and bewildering rabbit hole that is the health care system in the United States. In many ways the debate over the PSA test illustrates why the system is so confounding, expensive, unmanageable and resistant to change. As men, their providers and policy experts wrestle with the PSA conundrum, recent battles over mammography and hormone replacement therapy illustrate key lessons. When women learned that there was potential harm from annual breast screening…

Hickenlooper endorses Bloomberg’s war against soda

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Calling U.S. health costs a massive drain on the economy, Gov. John Hickenlooper on Tuesday endorsed bold moves to fight poor health like New York Mayor Michael Bloombergs war on super-sized sugary drinks. Hickenlooper spoke Wednesday to an international conference of wellness experts gathered from more than 40 countries at the Aspen Institute for The Global Spa & Wellness Summit. If you listen to that hum in the distance, sometimes you think thats the ventilation system, but really that sucking noise is the drain on our economy from the health care system. I probably shouldnt say…