Health Care

QPR Training Day

Join Leadership Fort Collins participants for QPR Suicide Prevention Training,  3 locations, 3 times all in Fort Collins. Click here to sign up for one of these sessions.

QPR is a nationally recognized suicide prevention gatekeeper training for adults. Alliance for Suicide Prevention (ASP) offers this free 60-90 minute training to any interested party. Can’t make QPR Training day? Click here to schedule a virtual Community QPR Training on the third Wednesday of each month.

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Study Assesses State Health Care Option Impact on Business

A study was released today by a Colorado group called the REMI Partnership (Regional Economic Models, Inc.) that projects some of the possible impacts on business of the so-called public option for health care.

The study is titled "Anticipating a State Health Care Option: Will Businesses Face Higher Costs or Will Quality & Access be Cut?”.

It was done in response to HB 19-1004, which was passed during the 2019 session of the Colorado General Assembly. Without much analysis, the bill ...

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More Changes Ahead on Health Care

For better or worse, the election of Donald Trump as President means more changes are coming to health care. All of the Obama administration happy-talk aside, the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’) is not working well as costs continue to rise and access becomes more limited due to high deductible policies.

Mr. Trump’s nomination of Dr. Tom Price, a U.S. Representative from Georgia, as secretary of Health and Human Services is a clear indication that ACA will be dramatically revised, if ...

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Amendments 69, 70 would hurt small business

Two proposed state amendments are harmful to small businesses and the state economy: Amendments 69 and 70.

Amendment 69 would create a huge new government entity to run a health care financing system in Colorado called ColoradoCare. It would have a budget larger than the current state budget. In fact, it will be larger than corporate giants like American Express, Nike and McDonald’s.

The money to run this behemoth would come from one of the largest state income taxes in the nation. All i...

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ColoradoCare costly, ineffective

Health care is one of the most important issues of our time. And because it is so personal, it is also an emotional and controversial issue.

There are philosophical differences of opinion about how to balance access to health care, costs and quality of care, and the best models for doing so. Simplistically, the models include employer-provided insurance, portable patient-centered private coverage and universal public coverage.

As health care costs continue to rise and questions of access p...

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Math Does Not Work for Amendment 69

In an earlier post I reported that the Chamber opposes Amendment 69, a measure on this fall’s ballot that would change the state constitution to create the country’s first state-level single-payer health care system. You can find a full background paper here.

The key reasons we believe this to be an extremely bad proposal include:

It is a state constitutional amendment. It is inflexible and would extremely difficult to change.
Amendment 69 is a huge tax increase. All earned and un...

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Chamber Opposes Amendment 69: Single-Payer Health Care

The Fort Collins Area Chamber of Commerce opposes Amendment 69, which is on this fall’s ballot. This is a proposed state constitutional amendment that would create a government-run single-payer health care finance system that is larger than the state budget. The proposed new government entity would be called ColoradoCares.

Before taking this position, the views of both supporters and opponents were sought and studied. You can find a background paper here that describes Amendment 69, lists t...

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Health Care Rainbows and Unicorns

The Chamber’s Annual Health Care in Your Future Summit was today. There were some compelling presentations, and all of the presenters did a great job.

All of the materials from the Summit will soon be available on the event website at www.NoCoHealthCareSummit.com. Particularly look through Jared Landis’ PowerPoint. He is with The Advisory Board Company and did a great job of explaining the ever-evolving health care landscape.

We also recorded the event and will post footage on the even...

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Quasi-Private Sector vs Government Health Care

 

Government has a pretty big headlock on our country’s medical and health care system. The sector is regulated differently in all 50 states plus via the incorrectly named “Affordable Care Act” aka ‘Obamacare’ plus through Medicare and Medicaid among other laws and programs.

I mention this to make the point that America has a quasi-private health care sector and to refute claims about the failure of private health care. It’s akin for criticizing a swimmer for losing a race...

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Successful Moving Fort Collins Forward! Campaign Buys Impact and Quality

As you know from the update in today’s Chamber SmartBrief e-Weekly, the Chamber’s annual Moving Fort Collins Forward! campaign is over and was very successful. When the residual pledges and numbers finish coming in, campaign volunteers will have raised over $700,000 and recruited 100 new members in just 11 weeks. Very impressive!

But while we measure progress with numbers, what do they really mean?

First of all, as I’ve said in this space before, we don’t raise money for the sake o...

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