By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Gov. John Hickenlooper is calling for an $18.5 million increase in state funding to strengthen mental health in Colorado with instant mental health updates available for gun background checks, a statewide 24-hour phone crisis hotline, walk-in mental health centers and a new streamlined commitment law to make Colorado communities safer. Acknowledging that emotions are still raw over the mass killing Friday of 20 first-graders and six educators in Connecticut, Hickenlooper said the mental health overhaul which will require legislative approval has been in the works since two days after the Aurora theater shootings last July. Related…
Category: Featured - Part 12
By Diane Carman For organizations and individuals working to address the epidemic of childhood obesity, the biggest challenge is to make it fun. Or at the very least to avoid making it humiliating, frustrating, boring and punitive. We need to bring back creativity. Creativity is crucial to solving the obesity crisis, said Chris Waugh, director and co-founder of the design innovation consultancy IDEO. Waugh spoke Friday at an event called Symposium Unplugged, sponsored by the Colorado Health Foundation. Waugh presented 10 steps to designing effective approaches to solving problems and offered vivid examples of how they have been employed in…
By Diane Carman The crisis in access to dental health care in Colorado is growing more severe even as the effort by the state Department of Health and Environment this year continues to highlight improved oral care as one of its 10 winnable battles. A new analysis released Monday by The Colorado Trust found that the number of Coloradans without dental insurance grew 17 percent between 2009 and 2011, and that even people with dental insurance failed to receive care due to cost or a lack of available dental providers. Coloradans need to speak up for the care they need…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Colorados new health exchange will cost an estimated $22 million to $26 million a year starting in 2015, spurring managers to consider advertising, taxes on insurance companies or fees charged to employers and consumers using the exchange to pay for it. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services formally approved Colorados exchange on Monday, making the state one of the first six in the country to approved to open for enrollment next October. Other states that will use a federally-run health exchange will pay fees of about 3.5 percent on the premiums that each person…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Two of Colorados largest insurance companies refuse to pay for their clients to see independent advanced practice nurses in urban areas even though some patients want to see them and the care would cost less. Advanced practice nurses say the insurance companies, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Colorado and Rocky Mountain Health Plans, are protecting doctors in a turf war instead of focusing on whats best for patients and allowing free market choice. Nicole Snelgrove, 35, has insurance through Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Colorado and has chosen to spend more than…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon AIDS killed scores of David Lipsons close friends, an adored partner and even his own brother. One of the first men in the nation to be tested for HIV back in 1984, David Lipson received the same terrible test results that ensnared so many of his friends. Then 26 and living in Los Angeles, Lipson learned he was HIV positive and his doctor told him he would die within two years. HIV infection rates are down 45 percent in Denver from 2005. Rates could decrease further if more men engaged in safe sex. Source: Dr. Mark…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon While some states are still wrestling over whether to build their own health exchanges, Colorado is playing hurry-up offense, tackling major policy decisions including the biggest one on the horizon: how to pay for the online health insurance marketplace. Now a reality across the country as the Affordable Care Act steams toward full implementation, health exchanges are supposed to make it easier for individuals and small business owners to choose and buy health insurance plans. Some people will qualify for government subsidies to help them afford insurance while exchanges will funnel others into public health insurance…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Colorado would have to pay $858 million to expand Medicaid over the next 10 years, but authors of a new national study say states that participate will bring in billions in federal cash and will dramatically cut the number of uninsured. If all states opt to expand Medicaid, the U.S. could cut the ranks of the uninsured by 21 million people or about 48 percent, the study authors found. They estimated that states would have to fund increases of about 3 percent in their Medicaid budgets or $76 billion nationwide while federal spending would increase by…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon The mother laces her fingers through her daughters hands, holding her in her lap. She sings to calm her while a medical assistant straps a blood pressure cuff around the girls arm. Amy gets nervous going to the doctor. Countless strokes that she suffered in utero 18 years ago have left her blind and severely developmentally disabled. At just over 100 pounds, she is petite, but still much too big for her mothers lap. Even so, her mom, state Sen. Irene Aguilar, a primary care doctor herself and a Denver Democrat, knows well how to soothe…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Tuesdays election results ensure that implementation of Obamacare will proceed on a fast track in Colorado and Democratic lawmakers want to move ahead with Medicaid expansion that could bring health coverage to nearly a quarter million low-income Coloradans. We would like to push to get health care to as many people as possible because thats going to reduce the costs for everyone, said Rep. Mark Ferrandino, D-Denver, who is expected to take the reins of the Colorado House in January after Democrats recaptured control of it on Tuesday. Gov. John Hickenlooper is more circumspect. While he…