Category: Featured - Part 15

Outreach campaign targets men with depression

By Mark Wolf Most maladies are unencumbered by shame and stigma. Yet for many men to acknowledge they are uncomfortable with the way theyre feeling maybe down, irritable, unmotivated, fatigued, feeling as if life might not be worth living, and, yes, maybe there are some issues down there requires a leap most men seem hesitant to take. Men are stubborn. We dont want to talk about our feelings. We are very leery and afraid of being labeled sissies, afraid of looking weak, and a lot of those things apply when youre talking about mental health, said Matt Vogl, deputy director…

Colorado hospitals want Medicaid expansion

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Burdened with providing $1.5 billion in care for the uninsured a year, Colorado hospitals support an expansion of Medicaid to help reduce health care costs. As of now, the Medicaid expansion is the best solution we know of to get health insurance for the people who need it most, said Julian Kesner, spokesman for the Colorado Hospital Association. Kesner said the associations financial analysts are calculating how much a failure to expand Medicaid would cost hospitals, but he doesnt have an estimate yet. Hospitals cannot turn away uninsured people who show up sick in emergency rooms….

Diabetes epidemic largely ignored by Coloradans

By Charlie Brennan I-News Network One in eight Coloradans likely will have diabetes by 2030, according to new estimates from the Colorado Health Institute, and the epidemic will cost the state an estimated $8.3 billion a year. Its a known, predicted disaster if we do nothing if we just sit back and watch, said Chris Lindley, director of the Prevention Services Division of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Few Coloradans seem to share Lindleys sense of urgency, however. Polls of the 1,000 Coloradans participating in Gov. John Hickenloopers TBD Colorado initiative have found that proposed remedies for…

Doctors, patient challenge New Mexico assisted suicide ban

By Diane Carman The question before the court in New Mexico is absurdly simple and yet impossibly complex. What is the meaning of assisting suicide? If a terminally-ill patient refuses a ventilator or a feeding tube and the physician yields to that decision, is that assisting suicide? If the patient is in excruciating pain and requests total sedation and no nutrition or fluids, can the doctor be held accountable for his death? What if the patient seeks a prescription from her physician so that when the pain of dying is overwhelming she can seek the ultimate relief on her own?…

Colorado AG predicts billion-dollar price tag for Medicaid expansion

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon If Colorado decides to expand Medicaid coverage to a larger percentage of the poor, the the states share could be a billion dollars over the next decade, Attorney General John Suthers warned on Monday. Suthers, who opposed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in court, said during a post-mortem panel discussion on Monday that Colorados governor and lawmakers face a tough decision. The expansion for a lot of states may seem like a no-brainer, Suthers said during a discussion of the Supreme Court ruling sponsored by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce at the Sheraton Denver Downtown….

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…

The real obesity cure: small, permanent lifestyle changes

By Diane Carman The average American is fat, sedentary, drinks too many sweetened soft drinks, eats too many French fries and knows it all too well. Most people in the U.S. want to lose weight, said Elizabeth Kealey, a registered dietician and professional research assistant at the Anschutz Health and Wellness Center. The problem is they just dont know how. Researchers at the center are testing strategies and documenting results, and while they dont claim to have the obesity cure at their fingertips, they have identified several approaches that appear to work for a significant population that wants to lose…

Cavity-fighting measure sinks along with civil unions

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon A bill aimed at thwarting cavities in babies became collateral damage in the fight over civil unions in Colorado late Tuesday night. Senate Bill 12-108 had sailed through earlier hearings and was expected to pass in the House on Tuesday night, then be up for final approval today. But the bill died along with nearly three dozen other measures that were held hostage during the civil unions standoff. SB 108 would have provided funding for dental benefits for pregnant moms on Medicaid. Research has shown that mothers who have tooth decay and untreated cavities can pass…

Bill calling for drug misdemeanors morphs into a study

By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Drug possession will not be reduced to a misdemeanor in Colorado this year after opposition from prosecutors torpedoed a sentencing reform bill. Instead Senate Bill 12-163 will now require a comprehensive study of Colorados drug sentencing guidelines that could result in new legislation next year. Revisions to the bill are expected to be presented to the Senate Appropriations Committee on Friday. The new bill calls for the drug policy task force of the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice to convene a study and produce draft legislation within six months. A bipartisan group of lawmakers…