By Linda Gorman Gov. John Hickenlooper wants yet another expansion of Colorado Medicaid. This one will cover the more than 86,000 collegestudentsin Colorado that the Census Bureau estimates have incomes below the federal poverty level. It also will cover the unknown number of otherwise healthy single students above the poverty level who have incomes up to $15,414 a year. (Income figures do not include additional subsidies received for things like housing, child care, energy assistance and food.) As the Hickenlooper Administration claims the expansion would enroll an additional 160,000 people, it seems that college students will be its primary beneficiaries….
Category: Legislation - Part 10
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Citing his own history of addiction and asserting that todays marijuana is not your Woodstock weed, Patrick Kennedy, son of the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, launched a new national public health battle against pot legalization in Denver Thursday. The new group is called Project SAM, Smart Approaches to Marijuana. The founders are trying to appeal to both the left and the right with Kennedy attracting progressives and former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum appealing to conservatives and libertarians. The group aims to disseminate the latest research on health impacts of marijuana, to speed access and…
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 Linda Gorman The federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has radically restructured federal subsidy programs for medical care. For the first time in decades, it makes it reasonable for Colorado to begin mending its structural fiscal imbalance by reversing the excessive growth in the states Medicaid and child health insurance programs. The act makes commercial insurance widely available for both working and nonworking people at all income levels. If it works as advertised, the federally subsidized commercial health coverage offered through the Affordable Care Act health benefits exchange will provide better health coverage for the basically healthy adults…
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…
By Gretchen Hammer The experience of military service can have a profound impact on a veterans life. I have listened as the veterans in my family recount with pride their service to our great country and with pain some of the difficult experiences of combat. The sacrifices they and our family made are real, and a real testament to their commitment to our country. As we come together to celebrate Veterans Day it is important that we consider how we might repay this commitment with a promise of our own: The promise of access to high-quality, affordable health care. Understanding…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon An experiment to ensure that complex Medicaid patients have a regular doctor and care coordinators who can help them stay healthy has saved Colorado an estimated $20 million in its first year, according to a new report from Colorados Medicaid managers. Were very happy that its moving in the right direction, said Laurel Karabatsos, director of health programs for the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF). So far, about 20 percent of Colorados more than 600,000 Medicaid clients are enrolled in the program called the Accountable Care Collaborative (ACC). Our goal over the…