Health Care
Colorado set to use marijuana money to implement opioid treatment program in worst-hit counties
UPDATE: The governor signed this bill into law on Wednesday, a day after this story was originally published.
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DENVER – Colorado is set to use a half-million dollars of its marijuana sales money each year for at least the next two years to implement an opioid addiction treatment program for two of the state’s counties hit hardest by the surging opioid crisis. Continue reading
Colorado Hospital Association: State budget puts dozens of Colo. hospitals in jeopardy
DENVER – The Colorado Hospital Association says the state budget for the fiscal year that starts this summer could cost state hospitals millions of dollars and have “devastating” effects on rural health care if a proposed fix doesn’t find support in the state Legislature.
The state budget has been the subject of most of the legislative debate at the state Capitol over the past few weeks – much of it centering on transportation and health care costs in trying to find a balanced budget.
But an analysis out Monday from the Colorado Hospital Association shows that the budget could have huge effects on health care across the state.
As the budget currently stands, it would cut $264 million from the Health Provider Fee, which hospitals pay to bring down hospital and health care fees for people on Medicaid and those without insurance.
The fees are redistributed after being matched by the feds through a formula that gives lower-income and Medicaid-receiving populations in Colorado a larger amount of money that providers in higher-income areas of the state.
When adding in matching funds from the federal government, which the state is due under its decision to expand Medicaid, the current budget as it stands would lead to a $528 million reduction to the HPF, according to the Colorado Hospital Association.
“In addition to potential closures, many hospitals in the state will have to consider layoffs, service line closures and delaying facility upgrades or service additions,” CHA said Monday.
The state budget writers say they need to cut money to the HPF this year in order to keep the budget under TABOR limits so they don’t have to issue taxpayer refunds, which they say would lead to cuts in other parts of the budget related to education and transportation.
The CHA’s analysis shows 80 percent of Colorado hospitals would see cuts this year – 13 of which would see reductions of at least $5 million, and six that would see cuts of at least $10 million.
Some of the most outstanding figures are as follows:
- Denver Health Medical Center would see cuts of $52.5 million;
- Children’s Hospital Colorado would see cuts of $17.3 million;
- Memorial Hospital would see cuts of $17.8 million
- University of Colorado Hospital would see cuts of $15.1 million
But CHA says the worst effects would be seen in rural hospitals, such as the Lincoln Community Hospital and Nursing Home, Kit Carson County Memorial Hospital, Montrose Memorial Hospital and San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center, which, among other rural health care facilities, face cuts of between a couple hundred thousand dollars and millions of dollars.
“Lincoln Community Hospital is the only hospital along a 160-mile stretch of I-70 and is the top employer in our 722-person town,” said Kevin Stansbury, the CEO of the Lincoln Community Hospital (Hugo). “The proposed cut to the Hospital Provider Fee would immediately move our hospital from operating in the black to operating in the red.”
“San Luis Valley Health Regional Medical Center is the only hospital that delivers babies in a five-county region in south-central Colorado and is the largest employer with more than 650 employees,” said Konnie Martin, the CEO of San Luis Valley Health, based in Alamosa. “This cut would mean that our hospital would lose more than $3.8 million this year. It will profoundly change the face of a rural community when you make these kinds of cuts, so we are hopeful that legislators will work together to get this deal done in this year’s session.”
The CHA says it is supporting a different bill that would modify state law keep the cuts from happening.
Senate Bill 267, which has bipartisan support from several Democrats and Republicans across the state, aims to make several changes to the state’s General Fund so as to help out rural Colorado.
It includes a provision that would move the HPF funds out of the General Fund so as that it is not subject to TABOR limits, which would be, at least, a temporary fix to the FY 2017-18 problem, according to the CHA.
The bill, if passed, would create a new board of governor appointees that would receive fees from hospitals and redistribute them similarly to how they are distributed under the HPF. It would, however, still be subject to review from federal Medicare and Medicaid programs as to its constitutionality. The current HPF would be eliminated.
“History will judge this legislature with acclaim or with embarrassment based on whether or not they finish the job of saving Colorado hospitals – by coming to consensus on a deal that passes SB 17-267,” said Steven Summer, president and CEO, CHA. “Failure is not an option for Colorado hospitals, communities, and the patients they serve. All legislators have a responsibility to those with so much riding on this issue. It’s time to put aside the antics and partisan speak and get this deal done.”
Senate Bill 267 is set for another hearing Tuesday in the Senate Appropriations Committee. It was amended in the Senate Finance Committee and referred back to appropriations on April 11.
The CHA says if the current budget is not amended, it will “immediately jeopardize the future of as many as a dozen Colorado hospitals.”
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Study: Nationwide medical marijuana program would save more than $1B in tax money, lives too
DENVER – A new study says that a nationwide rollout of medical marijuana would save taxpayers close to $1.1 billion each year on Medicaid prescriptions because medical marijuana use correlates with a decline in prescription drug usage.
The study by the University of Georgia’s father-daughter research team of Ashley Bradford and W. David Bradford lines up with a similar study the two did last year, which found similar correlation with Medicare prescriptions and states with medical marijuana programs.
That study found that taxpayers would save about a half-billion dollars each year under a national medical marijuana program.
But the new study, published this week in Health Affairs, looked at Medicaid – the country’s health care program for low-income people and not Medicare, the health system for elderly Americans.
It found that in states with legal medical marijuana programs, the number of prescriptions through Medicaid written and filled for certain types of drugs fell significantly.
The researchers saw an 11 percent drop in the prescription of painkillers, which include opioids – often blamed for the ongoing opioid and heroin epidemic currently plaguing the U.S.
But they saw larger drops in prescriptions for other drugs as well: There was a 17 percent reduction in nausea medication prescriptions; a 13 percent reduction in depression drug prescriptions; a 12 percent drop in seizure medication prescriptions; and a 12 percent drop in psychosis medication prescriptions.
“Patients and physicians in the community are reacting to the availability of medical marijuana as if it were medicine,” the researchers wrote.
But since most insurance programs don’t offer coverage for medical marijuana, even though it’s available in more than two dozen states, low-income and elderly Americans would be offsetting the cost to taxpayers with out-of-pocket costs.
The study estimated that Colorado saved around $14.4 million in 2014 in Medicaid prescription spending because of its medical marijuana program.
The researchers noted that there could be some instances in which replacing FDA-approved treatments with medical marijuana could be harmful, but also wrote that the research has begun to dispute the DEA’s Schedule I classification of the drug as having no medical uses.
A study published earlier this month in the Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence also said states with legalized medical marijuana programs have seen fewer opioid-induced hospitalizations per capita than states with no program.
New U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recently compared marijuana to opioids and suggested the idea that medical marijuana could help some addicts recover is “stupid.”
“Medical marijuana has been hyped, maybe too much,” Sessions said.
The Washington Post reports that Sessions also said that he was “dubious” of medical marijuana and research that points to it being an alternative painkiller and treatment option for opioid addicts.
“I’ve heard people say we could solve our heroin problem with marijuana. How stupid is that? Give me a break.”
Eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized recreational marijuana sales, but medical marijuana is legal in 28 states and D.C.
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Coffman extends olive branch to progressives, but stands strong on health care decision in town hall
AURORA, Colo. – Rep. Mike Coffman made headlines Wednesday when he said that White House press secretary Sean Spicer “needs to go,” but the five-term Congressman from Colorado’s first in-person town hall of the year saw much more of a focus from those in attendance on the ongoing debate over the U.S. health care system.
Slated to speak with constituents at the CU Anschutz campus for an hour, Coffman instead listened to tough questions and demands from constituents for an additional 45 minutes, sometimes trying to find an olive branch and other times rebuffing those in attendance.
The roughly 800-person capacity room was not entirely filled despite tickets to the event selling out ahead of time. And the lengthy rules list for the event, which banned yelling, among other things, was never quite enforced. Though progressive groups protested Coffman both before and after the event, it’s unclear if any of the people who showed up solely to protest asked questions inside.
Many of the three-dozen or so people who asked questions pressed Coffman on his support for the American Health Care Act, the Paul Ryan-backed plan to repeal and replace Obamacare that was pulled before it could face a perhaps-embarrassing failed vote in the full House.
“Are you going to side with Trump or…stand with your constituents?” asked one woman.
“What will it take you to vote with your constituents?” another pressed.
“I voted for you because I thought you’d be a leader,” one constituent said, according to Politico’s coverage of the event. “I don’t see you leading.”
Still others asked about the pre-existing conditions, and others pressed Coffman on Medicaid, which hundreds of thousands of Coloradans utilize for health care coverage and the AHCA would have cut significantly over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Coffman said he ran on the idea that he would repeal and replace Obamacare, which is why he carried through supporting the Republican proposal, though he said he would “protect those with pre-existing conditions.”
Coffman has already been targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as a seat Democrats hope they can flip in 2018.
His district, Colorado’s 6th, went to Hillary Clinton by 9 percentage points in 2016, and also went to Sen. Michael Bennet by a wide margin in 2014.
He already faces a challenge from Democrat Jason Crow, a Denver attorney who is a former paratrooper and Ranger in the U.S. Army who declared his candidacy Monday. A 25-year-old newcomer, Gabriel McArthur, is also running on the Democratic side.
Still, both face uphill battles to de-seat Coffman, who beat Morgan Carroll in 2016 by 31,000 votes – a few thousand fewer than he won by when he defeated Andrew Romanoff in 2014.
The last close election Coffman faced was in 2012, when he beat out Democrat Joe Mikloski by just 7,000 votes. That race also had fairly strong turnouts for Libertarian and independent candidates.
The district was the only in the state that saw a margin of victory between the candidates less than 10 percent in 2016.
But Coffman on Wednesday tried to find ways to meet Democrats in the audience and Republicans who are not pleased with Trump somewhere in the middle – something he did during the 2016 election but which has been mostly forgotten after his support for the AHCA.
He said he was “heading in [the] direction” of supporting having an independent counsel investigate possible ties between Russia and Trump associates.
He also said he supported a proposed law forcing the president, vice president and members of Congress to release their tax returns.
Immigration also came up, and Coffman said he would like to see undocumented immigrants who “have broken our immigration laws but haven’t broken our other laws” to “come out of the shadows.”
But the most noteworthy statement of the night for most opposed to Trump came at the end of the session, when Coffman was asked about Spicer’s comments, which he apologized for afterward, in which he said that Hitler didn’t use chemical weapons during World War II while comparing that to the gassing of civilians in Syria.
“He needs to go,” Coffman said of Spicer after being pressed on the issue.
But the seasoned Republican didn’t give in entirely to the crowd, saying that those “on the extreme left” would “never be satisfied,” while saying he would continue to vote as he felt necessary.
“When I disagree with the president, I will speak out against the president,” Coffman said. “But I’m not going to do it every other day.”
Coffman follows up town hall with interview Thursday
On the topic of healthcare, Coffman told Denver7 reporter Marc Stewart in an interview Thursday that he hopes the Republicans will likely write another healthcare bill.
“Do you think this is something we would see by the end of the year?” asked Stewart.
“I hope so,” Coffman said. “I mean, in my view, the end of the year is too late. I think we need to do it as soon as possible.”
He said he hopes that happens “in the next couple months.”
On immigration, Coffman sides with the president about securing the border, but feels policies also need to be realistic, especially when it comes to DREAMers.
“I think there ought to be some kind of DREAM Act for the young people that would allow them — through military service, through education, through work history — to have a path to citizenship.”
As far as undocumented immigrants living here now, Coffman provided no promises.
“Should you have that concern you could picked up by an ICE agent for no other reason than your citizenship status?” asked Sewart.
“I’m not going to speak to that,” Coffman said. “I think the administration is looking at different directions. I mean, they’re in violation of the law, and that’s why we have to reform the law.”
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Months after 2016 election, race for Colorado’s congressional districts in 2018 already heating up
DENVER – It’s been just over five months since the 2016 General Election, but two 2018 congressional races in Colorado are already heating up.
State Sen. Andy Kerr, a Democrat from Jefferson County, announced his bid for Colorado’s 7th Congressional District seat in an event a Dunstan Middle School in Lakewood – a school he attended years ago. Continue reading
Gorsuch could cast key votes on these high-profile cases, could take up Colo. cake shop case
DENVER – Colorado’s Neil Gorsuch is now the ninth U.S. Supreme Court justice, and he will immediately be thrown into several high-profile cases in which he could cast the deciding vote.
The Supreme Court has for more than a year operated with just eight justices after Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly in February 2016.
First up for Gorsuch and the full-bench court will be a case out of Missouri involving a church’s claim that its religious freedom is being violated by the state’s ban on public money going to religious organizations.
In Church of Columbia v. Pauley, the church argues that the state’s denial of public money to help build a playground violated the U.S. Constitution.
Gorsuch could also be called on to decide six cases argued last year should the other eight justices not be able to come to a majority conclusion. He would be called on to participate in new hearings on the cases and possibly break a 4-4 tie, but cannot issue decisions in any cases that do not end in a tied vote.
Among those cases are one involving a Mexican family suing a U.S. Border Patrol agent who shot their son across the Texas border.
There were two finalized 4-4 votes that resulted from Scalia’s death: one that involved public unions, and one that involved the detainment of undocumented immigrants, according to the New York Times.
The AP reports that those cases included one involving the rights of detained immigrants, and others involving discrimination involving housing and redistricting.
And the Supreme Court is set to hold private conferences on April 13 to decide what other cases it might soon hear.
Among the possibilities is the case involving the Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, whose owner, Jack Phillips, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case after a lower court ruled that Phillips discriminated against a gay couple who wanted a wedding cake in 2012.
Phillips has long claimed that as a Christian, he has the religious freedom to deny business to same-sex couples.
The Colorado Supreme Court last August declined to review the case, agreeing with a Colorado Court of Appeals decision that said the shop could continue to enforce its religious beliefs, but not while operating as a business in Colorado.
The U.S. Supreme Court could also take up a gun rights case out of San Diego in which the plaintiff argues the Second Amendment allows people to carry guns openly outside of their home, as well as a voter rights case involving voter identification and redistricting out of North Carolina at the April 13 conference. Four justices would have to vote to take up each case for a full court hearing.
Gorsuch, 49, is now the youngest Supreme Court justice, and Republicans hope that he will tip the majority back to conservatives, as was often the case with Scalia on the bench.
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Bellco Credit Union sued for alleged mortgage loan discrimination against women on maternity leave
DENVER – Greenwood Village-based home loan lender Bellco Credit Union faces accusations it broke federal fair housing laws by not giving mortgage loans to women while they were on or about to go on maternity leave.
Bellco Credit Union was sued by the Denver Metro Fair Housing Center in March in U.S. District Court of Colorado for allegedly discriminating against people based on their sex and familial status, the suit says. It was assigned earlier this month to a judge, and a scheduling conference in the case is set for May 26.
Read the lawsuit in full by clicking here.
According to the suit, Bellco has continued to deny mortgage loans to women who are either on or facing impending maternity leave until the women return to work for at least 30 days, which DMFHC says is a direct violation of both state and federal fair housing laws, as well as underlying rules for loans issued by Fannie Mae.
Bellco has more than 20 branches across Colorado.
Over a period of several months last year, DMFHC used five women to test Bellco’s rules by applying for mortgage loans either while they were already on maternity leave, or by saying they were about to go on it.
The women were all white in order to control the test, the suit says, and all had credit scores in the mid-700s, household incomes with two earners and money in their savings. Two of the women were not on our about to go on maternity leave so as to control the test, the suit says.
In all three cases in which the women said they were on or about to go on maternity leave, loan representatives from Bellco told the women they would have to return to work and provide one month’s worth of pay stubs in order to close on a home, despite some of them having alternate incomes from their husbands and, in one case, $72,000 in savings, according to the suit.
In one case, one of the Belco workers “unequivocally communicated that women on maternity leave must return to work as a threshold condition to potentially qualify for a home mortgage loan from Bellco,” according to the suit.
But the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has issued numerous guidance memos over the past seven years showing that women do have the right to obtain a mortgage loan while on maternity leave.
From 2010 to 2014, HUD received approximately 190 complaints regarding home loans and pregnancy or parental leave, around 40 of which were settled by the end of 2014, according to the suit.
When HUD settled with Houston-based lender Cornerstone Mortgage Company in 2011, an assistant secretary for HUD said that explicitly.
“Pregnancy is not a basis to deny or delay a loan. It’s just that simple,” HUD Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity John Trasvina said at the time. “Mortgage professionals may verify income and other resources and have eligibility standards, but they may not single out women on maternity leave to deny or delay loans that they are otherwise eligible for.”
Under the federal Fair Housing Act, people seeking home mortgage loans are protected from being discriminated against based on their sex or familial status (including pregnancy) if they can “demonstrate that she intends to return to work and can otherwise continue to meet the income requirements to qualify for the loan.”
And in 2014, HUD said that “borrowers scheduled to be on leave at the time the first mortgage payment is due may rely upon any combination of income received during leave or liquid assets not otherwise required for the loan to meet the underwriting standards,” according to the suit.
The test that DMFHC undertook met all the return-to-work requirements and minimum loan requirements necessary under law, according to the suit.
Just last July, Citizens Bank settled with HUD over accusations similar to those levied now against Bellco. And Fannie Mae, which underwrites guidance for Bellco, said in 2013 that “a lender should consider a borrower’s income while on leave” and in some cases in which the family leave payment is less than a woman’s normal income, that a lender “should take into account the borrower’s savings as available to supplement the borrower’s income.”
“Given this public guidance from HUD and Fannie Mae, Bellco should have known that its policy is unlawful,” the suit says.
The suit asks a federal judge to enjoin, or block, Bellco from continuing its practices. DMFHC claims it has been injured because it has had to “divert scare time, money and resources” to investigate Bellco in order to meet its missing “of eliminating housing discrimination and promoting housing choice for all people in the Denver metropolitan area.”
“Bellco knew or should have known that its policy of denying home mortgage loans to women who are using maternity leave was unlawful and illegal,” the suit says.
It also asks the judge to award both punitive and compensatory damages for Bellco’s alleged violations of the Fair Housing Act and Colorado Fair Housing Act, as well as attorneys’ fees and other reasonable costs.
“The denial of home mortgage loans to women who are otherwise credit worthy because they on maternity leave is not only unlawful, it severely limits women and families with children the ability to purchase or refinance a home and all the benefits that come with homeownership,” said DMFHC Executive Director Arturo Alvarado.
Bellco issued a statement Monday in response to the lawsuit saying the lawsuit has no merit:
“For more than 80 years, Bellco has served as a trusted partner to our members in this community. Bellco has never knowingly engaged in any discriminatory lending practices of any kind. In particular, Bellco’s policies forbid any kind of discrimination based on the sex or familial status of applicants, including pregnancy and maternity leave. Our attorneys are investigating the specific allegations in the complaint and will respond to them in court. But we are confident that the lawsuit has no merit.”
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New report shows drastic across-the-board increases in Colorado’s heroin use
DENVER – A new report released Thursday that studies heroin use in Colorado shows a huge spike in heroin seizures and hepatitis C transmissions among young users in the state.
The report, “Heroin in Colorado,” was compiled by a wide array of public health, drug enforcement and other officials and prepared by the Heroin Response Work Group. It’s the first of its kind in Colorado.
It is broken down into seizure and arrest data, overdose data, data on Naloxone use, disease transmission data, neonatal data, exposure calls and other treatment and user information.
The study covered the time period between 2011 and 2015, and saw jumps in most categories related to the illicit drug that has made a widespread comeback across the country that some have called an “epidemic.”
Among the key findings:
- A total of 70 percent of users surveyed in the Denver Metro Treatment Client Survey say prescription painkillers “played a role” in their decision to use heroin.
- 61 percent of those surveyed in the Denver survey said they had overdosed on heroin before. Of those people, the median number of overdoses they had experienced was three.
- Heroin-related deaths in Colorado doubled from 2011 to 2015, from 79 deaths to 160 deaths.
- Age-adjusted heroin overdose deaths increased by 93 percent over the same time period, and hospitalization rates jumped 41 percent.
- Heroin-related emergency room visits doubled from 4.45 per 100,00 people in 2011 to 9.28 per 100,000 in 2014.
- Colorado law enforcement agencies have seen a massive spike in heroin seizures. In 2011, there were 20, but there were 427 seizures in 2015 – a 2,035 percent increase. The amount of heroin seized jumped 1,562 percent from 2011 -2015, from 16.1 pounds to 268.7 pounds.
- The number of heroin-related arrests jumped from 743 in 2011 to 4,575 in 2015 – an increase of 515 percent.
- Reported new hepatitis C cases jumped from 379 cases in 2011 to 729 in 2015. The report attributed many of the new infections to needle-sharing among users.
- The yearly average price for a gram of heroin in Denver has dropped significantly, which the report attributes to a greater supply. It was $255.20 per gram in 2012, jumped to $308 per gram in 2013, but has since plummeted to just $123.12 per gram in 2015.
- At the same time, heroin purity levels in Denver dropped from 31.9 percent in 2012 to just 17.1 percent in 2015.
- Age-adjusted overdose rates for heroin, opioids in general, and all drugs are higher in Colorado than the U.S. averages.
- Pueblo County has the highest age-adjusted death rate due to heroin, and southern Colorado has higher rates than the rest of the state.
Some of the data was also released in January in the Substance Abuse Trend and Response Task Force’s 11th-annual report.
“Too many Colorado families have been hurt by the heroin epidemic,” said Lt. Gov. and Chief Operating Officer Donna Lynne. “This first-ever report provides the sobering statistics and serves as our call to action to do all we can to help our citizens avoid its use and provide support to those on the front lines of battling its misuse.”
“People are dying from opioid overdoses at an alarming rate across the country and here in Colorado,” said Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman. “Every one of the people we lose to an overdose is somebody’s loved one and their addiction and subsequent death not only impacts them and their families, it affects our community as a whole. Colorado must be proactive in tackling this heroin crisis, and this report provides us with comprehensive data that can help us to focus our state’s resources where they are most needed. My office will continue to work collaboratively with stakeholders to combat this growing issue.”
To read the full report, click here.
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Report: States with medical marijuana have lower opioid-related hospitalization rates
DENVER – A study published earlier this month in the Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence says states with legalized medical marijuana programs have seen fewer opioid-induced hospitalizations per capita than states with no program.
The study was authored by Yuyan Shi, an assistant professor at the University of California-San Diego, and looked at hospitalization records for marijuana and opioids in 27 states across the country from 1997 to 2014. Continue reading
Trump cozies up to Colo. Rep. Ken Buck while slamming rest of Freedom Caucus over AHCA revival
DENVER – After chiding a conservative group of congressmen for helping upend the House plan to replace Obamacare for the past week, President Donald Trump on Thursday cozied up to one of its members: Colorado’s Republican Rep. Ken Buck.
“Great op-ed from Rep. Ken Buck. Looks like some in the Freedom Caucus are helping me end Obamacare,” Trump tweeted Thursday afternoon, linking out to an op-ed Buck wrote for The Hill Wednesday in which he called for the revival of a new health care bill. Continue reading