For the first time in years, Coloradans who buy their own health insurance could be in for some relatively good news this week. When the state Division of Insurance announces the finalized 2019 rates for the individual insurance market on Thursday, consumers will see the lowest premium price increases since the implementation of the Affordable […]
Health
Posted inHealth, News, Politics and Government
As with birth control, Colorado makes anti-smoking drugs available at pharmacies — no doctor visit required
It’s about to get easier to quit smoking in Colorado. People now can skip the doctor’s office and go straight to a pharmacy to get prescription medication — pills, nasal sprays and inhalers — to help them quit smoking. The new statewide prescription protocol is the second in Colorado, following approval last year for pharmacists […]
Posted inBusiness, Coloradans, Environment, Health, News, Politics and Government
Recycling can be a hard sell in rural Colorado. That hasn’t discouraged a resourceful nonprofit effort in tiny Swink.
SWINK — Dee Hostetler walks through the quiet, cavernous brick building past pallets stacked high with translucent, kaleidoscopic bales of recycled plastic that filter the morning light like stained glass. The hollowed-out remains of this former Holly Sugar factory, all 27,000 square feet of it, stands just a block off the short strand of U.S. […]
Posted inColoradans, Environment, Health, News, Politics and Government
Rural southeast Colorado loved its landfills. After a health department deal, some will finally close
Over the past few years, as the state health department told small landfill operators in southeast Colorado that it would be more closely enforcing environmental regulations — probably pushing some of them toward closure — locals pushed back with a familiar refrain: Urban rulemakers didn’t understand rural communities and burdened them with unfair expectations. “I […]
Posted inHealth, News
The opioid crisis is breaking hearts in Colorado — and that’s forcing doctors to make tough choices
COLORADO SPRINGS — Lisa Seiling was playing with her dog in Palmer Park here one afternoon in early July when pain that had been lingering in her chest for several weeks suddenly became unbearable. “It just felt like someone was stabbing me right in the chest and the lung,” she said. “I grabbed my chest […]
Posted inGrowth, Health, News, Politics and Government
Colorado spends $4.7 million a year helping homeless people rehab from drug and alcohol abuse at Fort Lyon. Is it worth the cost?
LAS ANIMAS — The farther the white van got from Denver, away from the sirens and honking horns and closer to desolate stretches of two-lane highway through corn fields and melon farms, the more panicked Linda Fitzgerald became. When the van pulled into Fort Lyon, a former Army fort and then tuberculosis sanitarium, she had […]
Posted inBusiness, Energy, Environment, Growth, Health, News, Politics and Government
“It is going to be very messy”: Opposing oil and gas ballot measures respond to Colorado’s contentious drilling climate
Call it “Clash of the Ballot Initiatives.” Two measures — either of which would be, if passed, disastrous, critics say — seek to set new land-use standards in Colorado. One would require oil and gas drill rigs be set back 2,500 feet from homes and natural features such as streams. The other would give landowners […]
Posted inEnvironment, Growth, Health, News, Outdoors, Politics and Government
Three years after the Gold King Mine spill there’s no fix to leaky abandoned mines. What’s the holdup?
CLEAR CREEK COUNTY — When the Gold King Mine spill sent a plume of yellow sludge cascading down the Animas River in southwest Colorado three years ago, environmentalists and conservationists saw an opportunity to educate the public about a problem that’s been around for decades. They also saw it as a way to draw new […]
Posted inHealth, News, Politics and Government
Colorado doctor on influential state Medicaid board resigns after Sun report on pharma money
A doctor who served on a state advisory board that helps decide when Medicaid patients can be prescribed certain drugs has resigned following a Colorado Sun report that he failed to disclose thousands of dollars in payments and perks from pharmaceutical companies. In his email to state officials resigning from the Colorado Drug Utilization Review […]
Posted inBusiness, Health, News
After Sun report on pharma money and a Colorado Medicaid board, senior state attorney tells board members to be more transparent
AURORA — Amid questions over the pharmaceutical industry’s influence on members of a state Medicaid board, a senior lawyer in the Colorado Attorney General’s office on Tuesday night admonished members of that board to disclose all potential conflicts of interest in order to protect the integrity of their work. The reminder came after Colorado Medicaid […]