By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Rate shock. What rate shock? That seems to be the initial reaction both in Colorado and in states like California as rates for new plans proposed under Obamacare begin to emerge. Here in Colorado, while regular folks enjoyed Memorial Day, health policy geeks and insurance actuaries were mining a state website trying to find out how hundreds of proposed rates in Colorado look. The news about Colorado rates has been very slow to emerge because Colorados Division of Insurance (DOI) had a computer snafu that prevented industry insiders and members of the public from easily analyzing…
Category: News - Part 9
By Francis M. Miller In 1872, John Wesley Powell, the one-armed Civil War major, who hadled the 1869 descent of the Grand Canyon, was carefully guiding his horse through the sagebrush on the Colorado Plateau of the Great Basin. Powells first encounters with Indians in that vast aridregion generated a fascination that lasted a lifetime.On this triphesought an understanding of the Numa who consisted of the Paiute, Ute and Shoshone tribes.Even in the late 19th century, these peoplewere living a stone-age existence and contact with Europeans had been minimal. Powelldiscovered two things on that tripthat stunned him. Itdominated his thinking…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Since medical marijuana has become legal in Colorado, doctors have seen a dramatic spike in the number of babies and children who accidentally ate marijuana and needed emergency treatment. A new study published Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association Pediatrics found that 14 children needed to be treated at Childrens Hospital Colorado for accidental pot ingestion after 2009, when medical marijuana shops began to proliferate in Colorado. The children ranged from an 8-month-old to a 12-year-old. The study authors cannot make a direct link between the proliferation of medical marijuana shops and the…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon The pseudo therapist is the ultimate manly man: part Ron Burgundy, part Dr. Phil, and part Burt Reynolds. Meet Dr. Rich Mahogany, the hilarious, irreverent online doc who uses dark humor to combat the deadly serious topic of male depression and suicide. Dr. M, as his creators affectionately call him, teaches breathing exercises complete with the F-word so you can deal with your SOB boss and that 105-year-old lady doing 7 in the fast lane. His idea of yoga is the seventh-inning stretch. He cleans his desk with a leaf blower, counts a long spell on…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon The pseudo therapist is the ultimate manly man: part Ron Burgundy, part Dr. Phil, and part Burt Reynolds. Meet Dr. Rich Mahogany, the hilarious, irreverent online doc who uses dark humor to combat the deadly serious topic of male depression and suicide. Dr. M, as his creators affectionately call him, teaches breathing exercises complete with the F-word so you can deal with your SOB boss and that 105-year-old lady doing 7 in the fast lane. His idea of yoga is the seventh-inning stretch. He cleans his desk with a leaf blower, counts a long spell on…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Coloradans hunting for health insurance will have 19 companies competing for their business with up to 1,000 different plans that could be offered through the states new health exchange and on the open market. Starting in 2014, for the first time, insurance companies selling to individuals wont be able to exclude people with pre-existing health conditions. Thats one of the reasons consumers and competitors are eagerly awaiting plan details and costs, which Colorado authorities plan to unveil Wednesday. For now, Colorados Commissioner of Insurance Jim Riesberg says hes pleasantly surprised that 19 health insurance companies want…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Hovering at just over 4 feet 5 inches, the Broomfield second-grader is a smidge short for the NBA. But thats not stopping Caleb Nolan from planning his career as a basketball star and neither is his cystic fibrosis (CF). Diagnosed at birth with the rare disease, Caleb receives regular care at Childrens Hospital Colorado and happily plays basketball, soccer, baseball and football. Aside from licking salt on the sidelines to thwart dehydration, hes like any of the other boys on his team. And thanks to a new medication called Kalydeco that has been fast-tracked to market,…
By Dr. Anthony Vigil While New Mexico and other states are grappling with the question of whether to allow doctors to write prescriptions for drugs that terminally ill patients can take to commit suicide, countries such as Belgium and The Netherlands are pushing the envelope in distressing ways. For those who claim there is no evidence of a slippery slope in abuse of physician-assisted suicide once implemented, I offer several problems presented by the Belgium and Netherlands experiments. In these countries, it is legal for physicians to directly euthanize patients. For example, within the last 10 years, several patients who…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Colorados health exchange board approved a new federal grant request of $125 million on Friday that will include about $13 million to provide in-person assistance to the uninsured. Some board members tried but failed to boost the grant request even higher to between $133 and $135 million to ensure that Colorado will have enough money to reach out to people who may never have had health insurance and could need extensive help signing up for federal subsidies starting this fall. Now dubbed Connect for Health Colorado, the new exchange is slated to start signing up customers…
By Katie Kerwin McCrimmon Colorados governor has added his deputy chief of staff to the states health exchange board and says he wants the project to come in on time and on budget. Kevin Patterson, Gov. John Hickenloopers deputy chief of staff and chief administrative officer, joined the board following news that Colorado needed a mediator to help settle differences between the states Medicaid managers and those building the states new health exchange. (Read more: Mediator to triage health exchange problems) Kevin is one of the most talented people we have in the administration, Hickenlooper said this week. When theres…