Hey there, Colorado, and welcome to another edition of The Temperature, the only climate and health newsletter you will read today with two — count ’em TWO (2) — very cringey headline puns. Buckle in.
But before we get to that, I had an interesting conversation with a public health researcher in the past week about people’s perceptions versus reality. She studies attitudes toward firearms (see our first item below), and she noticed something in the state’s first-ever large-scale survey on gun ownership: What people thought about gun violence was not always in line with what was actually happening.
Take gun-related deaths. In the survey, 33% of respondents said they believed homicides were the leading cause of gun deaths, making it the most common response. In reality, it’s suicides, which outnumber gun-related homicides by nearly 4-to-1.
One reason for this misperception is that the news reports a lot about homicides, but not very often about suicides. There’s good reason for that — the tragedy of people having their lives taken from them deserves recognition, while reporting on suicides carries the risk of contagion. But it’s also a reminder of why quality local news that dives deep into issues is so important, and why it’s valuable for readers to see that kind of coverage alongside the breaking headlines.
We’ll keep trying to do our part here at The Sun so you can do yours. We’re in this together.
Now, let’s get to that news.
Reporter
TEMP CHECK
HEALTH
New data on gun ownership in Colorado
45%
Percentage of Coloradans who say they have firearms in the home
Nearly half of Coloradans live in a home with a firearm, and nearly a third say they personally own a firearm, according to a new survey by researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
The researchers, part of CU’s Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative, wanted to better understand gun ownership and attitudes in Colorado as they work to treat the problem of gun violence through a public health approach. The resulting survey, called the Colorado Firearm Injury Prevention Survey, is a first-of-its-kind effort in the state to gather such information, and it provides an unprecedented look into Colorado’s firearms culture.
The survey found that men outnumber women among firearms owners 2-to-1. A plurality — 47% — of firearms owners live in the suburbs, compared with 22% who live in rural areas and 31% who live in urban areas. Children live in 38% of houses with a firearm.
When asked why they own firearms, the three most popular answers from owners were personal protection, family protection and property protection — each received more than 50% — while exercising a constitutional right and hunting came after, with 48% and 39%, respectively.
The survey also found wide variation in day-to-day experiences with firearms. Among owners, 7% said they carried a firearm in public every day during the previous 30 days, and 3% said they fired their gun at least weekly.
But a majority of firearms owners — 59% — reported not firing their guns at all in the past 12 months, and about 10% said they almost never check their firearms to make sure they are stored securely when they are not in use.
To Erin Kelly, the Firearm Injury Prevention Initiative’s director of research, that shows the survey’s value in targeting potential public health campaigns to prevent what she calls “firearm-related harms.” (Kelly disfavors the term “gun violence” because she believes it fuels public perception that homicides are the leading cause of gun deaths, rather than suicides.)
“It’s just fascinating to think that the firearms aren’t necessarily being used,” Kelly said. “But, to me, that also says there’s a lot of really great opportunities for promoting that secure storage message.”
You can read more on this story in the coming days on ColoradoSun.com.
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
HOSPITALS
More from HCPF’s big hospital report release
$1.63
The amount privately insured patients paid hospitals in 2022 to receive $1 worth of medical care
This week, the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing released five big reports on Colorado hospital economics. We’ve already written about the first one — which showed, as we told you last week, that hospitals’ profits plummeted in 2022.
The other four, though, are also worth knowing about. Taken together, the reports show how HCPF, best known for administering Medicaid in the state, has transformed during the administration of Gov. Jared Polis into a major force for hospital transparency and accountability.
The explanation for that: Spending on hospitals accounts for nearly one-quarter of HCPF’s budget, which itself generally takes up about one-third of the total state budget. That means one out of every 12 dollars the state government spends in a year goes to hospitals. And that gives the state a lot of reasons to make sure hospitals are using that money appropriately.
So, let’s look at those other reports.
The Hospital Community Benefit Accountability report examines what hospitals are doing to provide benefits to the communities they serve. That report found that Colorado hospitals invested more than $1 billion in the 2021 fiscal year in community benefits, things like providing free or reduced-cost care, supporting behavioral health programs, addressing underlying social causes of poor health or supporting medical education. The figure is 6.9% of Colorado hospitals’ patient revenue for the year.
Perhaps most significantly, the report found that some nonprofit hospital systems aren’t spending enough on community benefits to outweigh the value of the tax breaks they get. That could set the stage in subsequent years for lawmakers to place minimum requirements on community-benefit spending.
The CHASE Annual Report details the doings of the Colorado Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Enterprise, which oversees the state’s hospital provider fee — a complicated way of drawing down federal dollars to give back to hospitals. But the real gem in this report is its examination of the “cost shift.” That’s when hospitals charge more to privately insured patients to make up for shortfalls in the rates paid by Medicare and Medicaid.
The report found that in 2022, Medicare paid Colorado hospitals 70 cents on the dollar, meaning it only paid 70% of what it cost a hospital to provide a service. Medicaid paid 81 cents, which is an improvement over pre-pandemic levels.
The cost shift to privately insured patients was about 63 cents on the dollar, meaning privately insured patients paid on average 63% more for a service than what it cost a hospital to provide, which is a decrease compared to 2019.
“It’s going in the right direction,” Kim Bimestefer, HCPF’s executive director, said. “It’s not where it needs to be, but it’s definitely going in the right direction.”
The Hospital Price Transparency Posting Evaluation Report looks at whether hospitals are posting prices online as they’re supposed to. The report found that most — nearly 60% — have a price transparency quality rating of “good.” But 31 hospitals were rated “poor” for their price-posting procedures.
Lastly, HCPF rolled out what it calls its Payment Variation Tool, which allows you to search for specific medical procedures and see which hospitals charge more and which charge less. It’s a little bit wonky to use, but there’s a ton of data in there if you like comparing hospital prices. And let’s be honest, who doesn’t?
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
MORE HEALTH NEWS
CLIMATE
Chipping away at ozone, one legal action at a time
Absent Coloradans giving up millions of gasoline cars overnight, or all the remaining coal-fired power plants closing years early, state regulators must chip away at the Front Range ozone problem one part per billion at a time.
So they try lots of little things: Replace gas lawn mowers, albeit slowly, with clean electric. Tighten some leaky oil and gas valves over here, fund a hydrogen filling station over there.
Those on the outside of the power structure looking in are resolved to attempt a thousand other small ozone cuts with the tools left to them: legal actions.
A stable coalition of nonprofit environmental groups, community activists and local governments demanding more action on ozone have tried many things: Demanding a stop to the Suncor refinery’s continual toxic leaks, pushing the EPA to accelerate Colorado’s ozone action plan, or seeking judicial sanctions on the state backlog in air pollution permits.
Our story today on four rejected permits at Weld County oil and gas wells reveals another of those thousand cuts.
Pads linking handfuls of oil and gas wells produce toxins that leak out of hoses, pipelines, valves and distributors. The toxic leaks include benzene, and ozone components like nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. Colorado air pollution permits often require well operators to burn away those toxic gases onsite. While the burn creates carbon dioxide, the end result is better for human health than new doses of ozone.
But what if those burners don’t hit the 95% elimination rate promised by the permits? Where’s the proof? Hundreds if not thousands of wells are cranking away at any moment, and slight imperfections in the flaring process add up to not-so-slight pollution.
So now comes news that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has rejected Colorado-issued air pollution permits at some Weld County oil and gas processing sites, saying the state must rewrite the permits to ensure ozone-causing chemicals are burned off before hitting the atmosphere.
Environmental advocates who won the EPA order through petitions say the ruling could impact thousands of other oil and gas permits in Colorado and other states, because Colorado’s recent ozone failures mean far more drillers must get air pollution permits limiting ozone-causing chemicals.
The EPA may now consistently order those drilling and processing sites to test the effectiveness of their toxics flaring rather than rely on predictions of how the equipment will work, the advocates said.
The victory — perhaps only temporary — reinforces the strategy of using a Democratic-run EPA and state and federal courts to force ozone cuts from the outside. Read more about the EPA’s decision on the Weld County permits at today’s ColoradoSun.com.
Section by Michael Booth | Reporter
MORE CLIMATE NEWS
CHART OF THE WEEK
Colorado’s falling COVID numbers
Don’t go running wild just yet, but Colorado’s fourth winter of COVID seems like it’s on the way out.
Last month, we told you about the weird pattern where Colorado’s COVID cases always seem to hit a peak in late-November. At the time, though, it was unclear whether a new variant might create a second peak for the state this winter.
Well, the answer appears to be no. As of last week’s numbers, COVID hospitalizations had declined substantially, to 163 from the peak of 280 in, you guessed it, late November. The rate of cases diagnosed in emergency departments had fallen. So, too, had the percentage of tests coming back positive, and a majority of wastewater systems were showing a decline in the virus, as well.
The state updates these numbers every Wednesday at around 4 p.m. So check out the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s COVID data dashboard this afternoon to see if these trends hold.
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
HEAT MAP
CLIMATE
HEALTH
Hey, thanks for reading all the way to the bottom. We know it’s early, but here’s a Valentine from us to you:
Roses are red.
You’re awesome and we love you.
Yeah, sorry, we’re not great with poetry. But you get the idea.
We’ll see you next week.
— John & Michael
Corrections & Clarifications
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