By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon GLENWOOD SPRINGS The young couple faced a tough choice: have their first baby in their hometown in Colorados priciest mountain resort area or travel instead to Mexico City. Because the 23-year-old woman was uninsured and an undocumented immigrant during her pregnancy, the birth in Colorado would have cost the couple thousands of dollars out of pocket. The womans 27-year-old husband is a U.S. citizen who grew up in Illinois, but works in Glenwood Springs, the bustling city where many service workers live about 40 miles down valley from ritzy Aspen. He gets insurance through his job,…
News - Part 7
The evenings are getting cooler and the days shorter. Dont let your exercise routine go by the wayside. Join family and friends outdoors for some fall activities before the snow flies. Rake your leaves into a big pile. Jump and play in the leaves and then do it again! Take a walk to find pretty fall leaves to use in art projects and home decorations. Organize a friendly game of flag or touch football. Get lost (and found again) in a corn maze. Walk around a pumpkin patch to find the perfect one. Take a trip to the country to…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon When new Connect for Health Colorado ads launch this fall, Spanish speakers will hear a different message from other potential customers. The call to action will be Come and learn rather than Come and buy, the message that will bombard most other customers. Thats because many Spanish-speaking immigrants dont even ponder buying health insurance since they think its out of reach financially, according to a consultant who is advising Connect for Health. Spanish speakers have the perception that health insurance is not an option for them so they are not looking for health insurance, Melissa Burkhart,…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon A new health insurance company that is offering some of the lowest prices for health coverage on Colorados new exchange is now the first to decide that it will cover transgender care. Colorado HealthOP, a new nonprofit member-owned health cooperative formed with federal grants under Obamacare, has vowed that it will not discriminate against any groups. Currently most plans sold in Colorado and around the country specifically bar medical care for transgender people. That means most health carriers wont pay for hormone treatments or gender reassignment surgeries. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has strengthened gay…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Twenty-two days before the slated opening of Colorados new health exchange, the project manager issued yet another red light warning, signaling that data-sharing with Colorados Medicaid systems may not work by Oct. 1 and that Connect for Health Colorado managers might have to shift to contingency plans. On top of troubles meshing with the states Medicaid systems, managers at Connect for Health Colorado are contending with IT snafus from the federal government. Managers warned Colorado board members on Monday that the Social Security Administrations data system likely will be offline for four hours every night from…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon COLORADO SPRINGS Obamacare moved one step closer to becoming reality in Colorado this week. Consumers can now talk with live customer service agents if they want to learn about options to get tax credits and buy health insurance through Colorados new health exchange. The number is: 1-855-PLANS-4-YOU (1-855-752-6749). Connect for Health Coloradoofficially opened its call center this week and dozens of agents are now standing by in a refurbished warehouse where calls started flowing in on Tuesday. Consumers cant sign up for health plans yet. Nor can they determine exactly how much theyll get if they…
By Maren Stewart During the Get Movin Challenge, Coloradans embarked on a 30-day challenge to prove that Colorado is the biggest mover by getting active 30 minutes a day. On Aug. 1, LiveWell Colorado and Gov. John Hickenlooper kicked off the challenge to make Colorado the healthiest state in the nation. So how did the state do? More than 8,170 Coloradans participated. 37,800,000 calories were collectively burned, or 10,800 pounds shed! More than 92,500 hours of physical activity were logged. Thats more than a decades worth of movement. 300,000 miles of activity were traveled, or 780 trips across the state…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Squirrels and software snafus have brought down NASDAQ over the years. Last weeks debilitating three-hour crash of the financial exchange appears to have been triggered by a software glitch, proving that even long-established networks can be vulnerable to catastrophe. In Colorado, an exchange of a different sort Connect for Health Colorado is bracing for different disasters: blizzards, floods and severed data lines. But the most likely potential problems center on connections with Colorados Medicaid computers, insurance industry websites and the federal data hub, which must provide information on tax subsidies to help cut the cost of…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon While politicians continue to argue over the fate of Obamacare, consumers are deeply confused about what reform may mean to them and how they can find help. A new tool aimed at delivering answers debuted in Colorado this week: the Blue Guide from the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative. Its mobile. It offers statewide information. And if you tell the website or app where you are, it will use geolocation to instantly show you nearby clinics, mental health centers or assistance sites where you can sign up for health insurance once Colorados new health exchange, Connect for…
By Richard D. Lamm The difficulty of medical ethics and culture is that it allows, indeed it makes morally obligatory, practices and behaviors that increase health care spending without regard to other public priorities that get crowded out by the incessant demands of health care. To the extent medical ethics drive resource use, they do not give adequate moral guidance to the larger distributional decisions faced by government and other third party payers. Ironically to the extent that medical ethics drive marginal spending, they actually lower both the quality of life and well-being of the community. Key tenants of medical…