Completely happy exhausted Wednesday, Colorado, particularly to these of you attempting to maintain up with quickly altering federal funding coverage.
Yesterday’s explosion of chaos in Colorado across the Trump administration’s order freezing a bunch of federal grants and different funding was reminder for these subsequent 4 years: As a lot as folks could need to say it’s a marathon, not a dash, there’ll nonetheless be occasions after we will all be operating actually laborious.
Nevertheless it’s additionally a reminder that, after the tempo slows down, we nonetheless must preserve operating.
(Actually simply minutes in the past, The New York Occasions reported that the order has been rescinded.)
Have a look at this 52-page supplemental memo the White Home despatched out with directions for complying with the order, as obtained by Politico. Scroll previous the primary web page to the spreadsheet of applications affected by the order. (That’s 2.25-point font; we checked. And Helvetica, at that.)
Each single a kind of applications has an individual or a nonprofit or an trade that’s (or maybe would have been) affected by it. And, no matter you concentrate on the order — whether or not you’re for it or in opposition to it or blah on it or confused about it or undecided but what you suppose — we are able to all agree that it’s consequential. And which means, if the order returns or takes one other kind, it’s price listening to what these penalties are, no matter they’re.
We right here at The Solar are long-attention-span folks, so we’re dedicated to doing simply that. Thanks in your help to assist us — and when you have perception into explicit impacts, at all times be happy to electronic mail us at newsletters@coloradosun.com.
OK! It’s information time.
IMMIGRATION
Colorado has expanded medical insurance applications for immigrants. What occurs now?
The quantity of people that have signed up for well being protection by two Colorado applications for immigrants
In the course of the administration of former President Joe Biden, Colorado took daring steps to expand health coverage to immigrants within the state, no matter their authorized standing.
Tens of 1000’s of individuals took benefit of these applications to realize protection for themselves or their youngsters. The hope of supporters is that this can decrease the uninsured fee in Colorado since immigration standing will be a major barrier to obtaining health coverage. Offering entry to protection for major and preventive care might additionally scale back the quantity the state spends paying for emergency care for uninsured noncitizens who’ve a well being disaster.
Now, because the administration of President Donald Trump vows an aggressive crackdown on folks dwelling within the nation with out documentation, the long-term destiny of these applications is unclear — the applications rely at the least to some extent on federal funding.
However, maybe extra urgently, Colorado has collected a number of names and make contact with data for folks the Trump administration could also be on the lookout for. So what’s the potential that the state might be pressured handy these over?
It’s slightly unclear, although it’s additionally not sure how helpful the data could be to federal immigration brokers.
First, the fundamentals: Colorado law generally prohibits state agencies from asking about immigration standing or from sharing figuring out data for the needs of immigration enforcement.
“Federal legislation doesn’t require that state businesses or personal corporations share data with immigration officers,” César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, a legislation professor at Ohio State College (beforehand on the College of Denver), who makes a speciality of immigration enforcement legislation, wrote in an electronic mail.
“A federal legislation bars Colorado from refusing to share details about an individual’s citizenship or immigration standing with (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), however that legislation solely applies to data that the state already possesses and Colorado legislation has barred state officers from asking for this data since 2022.”
The protection expansions largely come by two applications.
One is known as OmniSalud, and it offers people who find themselves not eligible for federal subsidies state assist to buy personal medical insurance plans. This system works along with the state’s insurance coverage trade, Join for Well being Colorado, but it surely doesn’t use the trade’s platform.
As an alternative, Colorado created a completely new trade referred to as Colorado Join to deal with the sign-ups. Which means the info is saved individually and isn’t shared with the federal authorities. Colorado Join doesn’t ask about immigration standing, mentioned Kevin Patterson, the CEO of Join for Well being Colorado.
For 2025, greater than 13,000 folks signed up for protection by Colorado Join, together with 12,000 who signed as much as obtain sponsored protection by OmniSalud. (Due to funding limitations, OmniSalud enrollment is capped, however folks can nonetheless purchase unsubsidized protection.)
The second program is known as Cowl All Coloradans, and it rolled out solely in the beginning of the 12 months. This system permits youngsters and pregnant folks to obtain Medicaid protection no matter their immigration standing.
That program has now enrolled greater than 11,000 folks.
The Colorado Division of Well being Care Coverage and Financing shares some details about these enrollees with the federal Heart for Medicare and Medicaid Companies, which is often known as CMS.
“Traditionally, CMS has used the data just for the aim of figuring out eligibility,” Marc Williams, a state Medicaid spokesman, wrote in an electronic mail.
Patterson and Williams mentioned the state is dedicated to safeguarding enrollees’ data. However the place this will get murky is what would occur if the federal authorities obtained a courtroom order directing Colorado handy the data over.
Williams wrote that the state “will proceed to adjust to all subpoenas, warrants and courtroom orders as required by the legislation.”
Patterson mentioned, if a courtroom order or subpoena arrived, “There’s a authorized course of we must undergo.”
García Hernández mentioned, whereas it’s doable that immigration authorities might receive a courtroom subpoena or search warrant for the data, it could be uncommon.
“ICE hardly ever does that,” he wrote.
Watch ColoradoSun.com within the coming days for a full story on this situation. If you need to observe extra of García Hernández’s authorized evaluation on the Trump administration’s immigration actions, you’ll be able to sign up for his newsletter.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
At Denver Well being, your physician will see you now (and never their display screen)
Dr. Daniel Kortsch is a fairly fashionable man as of late within the hallways of Denver Well being, the hospital the place he works in major care.
Colleagues come as much as him for spontaneous hugs. He’s acquired at the least one field of goodies.
The explanation for this affection has to do with Kortsch’s different job on the hospital — as chief medical data officer, type of a guru on the intersection of know-how and affected person care. Over the previous few months, Denver Well being has been testing and now broadly rolling out a man-made intelligence program that helps docs transcribe conversations with sufferers after which convert them into notes that may be entered into the hospital’s digital medical information system.
Sound easy sufficient? Effectively, for docs overburdened with tedious documentation work lengthy after their day on the clinic is over, it’s life-changing.
“It’s transformational,” Kortsch mentioned. “I feel it’s the most transformational know-how I’ve seen in my medical apply, ever.”
This system comes from an organization referred to as Nabla, which now counts 50,000 docs and different medical practitioners throughout the globe — however principally in the USA — as adopters. The Nabla program helps 35 languages, and it integrates immediately with a hospital’s medical document system.
Docs merely discuss with their sufferers naturally whereas this system works within the background. On the finish, this system produces a abstract of the go to for the physician to evaluate. If the physician offers the OK, these notes get entered into the hospital’s information system.
What used to take dozens of minutes per affected person now takes a couple of seconds. The consequence, Kortsch mentioned, is much less time working within the clinic after-hours to make amends for documentation and fewer “pajama time,” the time period docs use to explain the hours at house at evening spent on digital paperwork.
The hospital is reporting decrease burnout amongst docs, larger satisfaction amongst sufferers. And extra eye contact between docs and sufferers, as physicians flip their eyes away from the computer systems the place that they had beforehand typed furiously throughout visits and switch them towards the folks they’re truly treating.
“The one distinction you’ll discover,” Kortsch mentioned, “is that your physician seems at you extra.”
Watch ColoradoSun.com within the coming days for a full story on Denver Well being’s use of AI.
DISEASES
No main uptick in Colorado tuberculosis circumstances, regardless of the Kansas outbreak subsequent door
The preliminary variety of tuberculosis circumstances reported in Colorado in 2024
To our east in Kansas, public well being officers are dealing with a tuberculosis outbreak that’s among the many nation’s largest since at the least the Nineteen Fifties. (You’ll have learn that it’s the largest in U.S. historical past, however that is erroneous.)
However right here in Colorado, now we have seen no such explosion of circumstances of the bacterial illness, despite the fact that the variety of circumstances reported in Colorado final 12 months exceeded the variety of circumstances reported thus far within the Kansas outbreak.
Confused? It’s seemingly a terminology situation.
To a layperson like, say, a well being care journalist, the time period “outbreak” is usually used to imply a brand new emergence of a number of infections. However to an epidemiologist, the time period outbreak is extra particular — it implies linked chains of transmission that bind these infections collectively.
So, when Kansas reviews 67 folks being treated for active cases of tuberculosis as a part of the outbreak, the implication is that these circumstances are all related to some widespread origin of an infection and being unfold domestically.
In preliminary numbers, Colorado final 12 months reported 78 circumstances of tuberculosis, down from 89 circumstances in 2023 however above the common of 70 circumstances per 12 months the state reported pre-COVID pandemic.
Tuberculosis circulates extra broadly in some international locations exterior the USA, and it’s not all that unusual for states to report circumstances in individuals who traveled to or immigrated from these areas. Sustained person-to-person transmission of the illness inside the USA is way more uncommon.
“Typically, our circumstances every year are typically sporadic or related to restricted native person-to-person transmission,” Kristina Iodice, a communications director with the Colorado Division of Public Well being and Surroundings, wrote in an electronic mail. “We aren’t seeing will increase just like these in Kansas.”
AFFORDABLE CARE ACT
Mountain communities nervously eye the subsidy cliff
A pair weeks in the past, we told you about the hardship which may observe if enhanced federal subsidies that assist folks purchase medical insurance expire on the finish of the 12 months as scheduled.
After studying the merchandise, Ian Billick, the mayor of Crested Butte, wrote in to inform us simply how laborious that hardship might hit in Colorado’s mountain communities, the place unsubsidized insurance coverage is ridiculously costly.
Billick and his household obtain a month-to-month credit score of round $1,500, due to the improved subsidies. If these subsidies had been to go away, Billick must pay full freight for his medical insurance plan for his household of 4.
The worth? It’s $2,500 a month — or $30,000 a 12 months for a plan with a $9,000 deductible.
Mess around lengthy sufficient with this KFF calculator by plugging in mountain ZIP codes and you’ll provide you with some actually astonishing figures — like a single 60-year-old from Glenwood Springs making $65,000 a 12 months who might be taking a look at almost $1,000 more per month for insurance coverage if the improved subsidies go away.
As Billick notes, that might wreak havoc not simply on people and households, but in addition employers in the neighborhood, too.
For more on this, click over to today’s story on ColoradoSun.com.
MORE ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH NEWS
The administration of President Donald Trump over the previous couple of weeks threw the scientific neighborhood into chaos when it imposed a freeze on grant critiques and communication on the Nationwide Institutes of Well being after which once more when it imposed a freeze this week on all kinds of federal grants and help. (On the previous, the administration has since mentioned the NIH can continue working on ongoing and mission-critical research.)
The NIH is a powerhouse biotech funder in the USA, issuing greater than $37 billion in grants to greater than 2,800 entities within the 2024 federal fiscal 12 months, which resulted in September. Of the 47 grant recipients in Colorado, the College of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus — formally a part of CU-Denver — receives by far probably the most.
The campus took in practically $350 million in NIH grants final fiscal 12 months, about 60% of the full NIH funding that got here to Colorado. CU-Anschutz ranked twenty seventh nationally for NIH funding — although far behind the roughly $860 million that first place Johns Hopkins College acquired.
Different main recipients of NIH funding in Colorado included CU-Boulder, Colorado State College, Nationwide Jewish Well being, the College of Denver and two personal corporations: Denver-based software program firm Palantir Applied sciences and Boulder-based biopharmaceutical firm Crestone Inc.
After information broke of final week’s freeze, we reached out to CU-Anschutz to see if its analysis groups’ NIH funding had been affected. The Trump administration additionally imposed a freeze on ARPA-H, a separate analysis funding company throughout the U.S. Division of Well being and Human Companies.
“We’re carefully monitoring all of those modifications, however thus far now we have not acquired any data to point a change within the ARPA-H funding or different federal funding coming to us,” David Kelly, the campus’s senior director of media relations, wrote in an electronic mail.
Whew, is anyone else out of breath? Perhaps it’s OK to cease operating once in a while to get a drink of water — or one thing else, we’re not judging!
Thanks for sticking with us and being a part of The Solar neighborhood. We simply love you to items.
— John & Parker
Corrections & Clarifications
Discover one thing fallacious? The Colorado Solar has an moral accountability to fix all factual errors. Request a correction by emailing corrections@coloradosun.com.
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