Meeting of Interest
12th Annual Meeting of the Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved
Friday, Sept. 26, 2008
8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Red Lion Hotel
Denver Southeast
3200 S. Parker Road at I-225
"Keeping the Momentum"
The
12th Annual CCMU Conference will examine strategies from Colorado and
across the country to maintain progress in health care reform.
Invited
speakers include Gov. Bill Ritter; Dr. Neal Halfon, Director, UCLA
Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities; Dr. Mark
Levine, Chief Medical Officer - Region VIII, Centers for Medicaid and
Medicare Services; and others.
The
Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved is a coalition of
public, private and non-profit organizations committed to access to
affordable, timely, quality health care for everyone in Colorado.
For more more information and to register, click here.
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The Business Health Forum is funded by several foundations, including The Colorado Health Foundation and The Colorado Trust.
The BHF is a project of the CACI Educational Foundation.
Stay tuned for info. about upcoming business health care forums in your community.
To learn more about the Forum, contact Amy Fletcher at afletcher@bizhealthforum.org or call 303-866-9659.
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Dear Amy,
As health insurance premiums continue to
soar and Colorado examines wide-scale health care reform, there has
never been a more important time for the business community to engage
in the debate. The Forum is a new project to help you connect the dots
and weigh in on solutions.
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Ex-Medicare chief criticizes reform proposals
In order to make health care affordable,
the system needs more efficiency - not just more cash or tax credits,
Mark McClellan, former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, told a crowd of more than 200 statisticians in Colorado on
Monday.
McClellan,
a former associate professor of economics at Stanford University who
has studied health care costs, was the keynote speaker for the five-day
Joint Statistical Meetings conference. The annual conference, which
attracted more than 5,000 statisticians in a variety of fields from
across the country to the Colorado Convention Center, was organized by
the American Statistical Association.
Neither presidential
candidate's proposed health care reform will pay for itself, but the
real long-term solution to making health care more affordable is to
make the system more efficient, a goal shared by both presidential
candidates, said McClellan, brother of former White House Press
Secretary Scott McClellan.
McClellan envisions an "electronic
infrastructure," built by private-public partnerships, that could
collect data and make it available for analysis about which treatments
are most effective for which patients. Colorado Independent
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Top health care news
Some Colorado brokers criticize new law affecting rates
Some
Colorado insurance brokers who work with small businesses plan to renew
health insurance policies earlier than usual, saying a law that goes
into effect Jan. 1 will increase premiums.
Colorado Insurance
Commissioner Marcy Morrison is criticizing the practice, saying it is
an attempt to "circumvent" House Bill 1355, which was passed by the
General Assembly and signed by Gov. Bill Ritter in 2007.
HB 1355
removes claims experience and health status as factors that can be used
by an insurance company to set premiums for small employers.
Supporters of the law say it will stabilize premiums because employers
can no longer be penalized for unhealthy employees or rewarded for
healthy employees. Critics say it will increase premiums for some small
businesses.
For more information: Denver Business Journal
Old, frail nursing home residents at risk of getting evicted
Across the country, nursing homes are forcing out frail and ill
residents. While federal law permits nursing-home evictions in some
circumstances, state officials and patient advocates say facilities
often go too far, seeking to evict those who are merely inconvenient or
too costly. Residents with dementia or demanding families are among the
most vulnerable, particularly if they depend on Medicaid to pay their
bills, the officials and advocates say.
Those on Medicaid bring
facilities as little as half what they can get from residents who pay
out of pocket, with private health insurance or through Medicare, the
federal-state health program for the elderly.
No one counts
evictions nationwide. But formal complaints about nursing-home
discharge practices have doubled over a decade, to 8,500 nationally in
2006, making it the second-biggest category tracked by the federal
Administration on Aging, trailing only complaints about unanswered
calls for assistance.
Officials in more than a dozen states say
involuntary discharges have risen even as the number of nursing-home
beds has declined. In the District of Columbia, for example, officials
contest roughly one in seven evictions as improper, and say still more
go unchallenged. Wall Street Journal
Colorado household survey to help inform health policy
The rising cost of health care is a major concern of Coloradans, and
many agree it's time for a change. From Aug. 8-22, 2008 Colorado Voices
for Coverage (CVC), a group of four organizations, will conduct an
affordability study in conjunction with the Colorado Center on Law and
Policy.
CVC will host workshops in communities statewide, where
Coloradans will fill out a confidential household budget survey on what
is affordable for health insurance. Participants are compensated with
a $10 gift certificate, and childcare and snacks are provided. This is
a great opportunity to help inform policy makers and the public about
health care affordability as Colorado moves toward reform.
If you
are interested in helping organize a workshop in your community or
recruiting workshop participants, please contact Kelli Keck at
cvcaffordability@yahoo.com or 303-839-1261.
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