Denver Post file photo

A new report showing that a higher proportion of Coloradans are frequenting hospital emergency rooms when they could be served in simpler settings is troubling indeed.

A survey released by the Colorado Trust showed that Medicaid and Medicare patients went to ERs in big numbers — much more so than did Coloradans with health insurance and those without any insurance at all.

We have to wonder if access for those with government health coverage is the issue at work. It’s well known, for instance, that Medicare patients can have issues finding a provider to take them. Perhaps they turn up at the ER out of frustration in having no quick access for health issues that may suddenly emerge.

In any case, what’s certain is that a system that forces patients to emergency rooms when they could be served just as well at a less expensive facility does not serve the interests of taxpayers or patients.

After 26 years and some two dozen Emmys, the wonderful PBS show Reading Rainbow went off the air in 2009, after having inspired generations of kids to pick up a book and enjoy.

We were heartened to learn of news that the show is back — on iTunes and as an iPad app.

Reading Rainbow, which began in 1983, was hosted by LeVar Burton. Each show centered on a children’s book, and included an adventure guided by Burton and ended with children’s reviews, introduced with the line: “But you don’t have to take my word for it.”

Burton also has been in the news of late, firing back at GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney for the candidate’s attack on funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting during the Denver presidential debate, and extolling the childhood educational benefits of PBS programming.

He is right about the value of PBS kids’ show programming, and it’s good to see him taking a stand.

In the meantime, the migration of Reading Rainbow to devices popular today gives us hope that its mission of literacy and enrichment will live on.

By Stuart Clark Rogers
Colorado Voices

During the last 10 years of my working life, when I taught a variety of marketing subjects at the University of Denver, I promised what I called “executive credit” for answers to essay questions. My intent was to instill appreciation for a skill that we are seeing regularly in this season of intense political activity, and which clearly distinguishes persons aspiring to elected office. But, because I was teaching business students, I emphasized its importance in corporate management.

I defined that special skill as “the ability to speak and write authoritatively on subjects about which one knows little or nothing.” In other words, being able effectively to “wing it.”

I discovered the importance of this underappreciated aptitude during my 17 years as a marketing executive with a major American corporation, a stint in the senior executive service in Washington, D.C., and eight years running my own business. For example, it is crucial to executives conducting annual meetings of shareholders. No matter how good the briefing books prepared by legal counsel and public relations departments, inevitably questions arise for which one is totally unprepared, and that is when aptitude for faking pays off. Only occasionally can a captain of industry in such a situation get away with, “I’ll turn that over to so-and-so,” or “I’ll have to get back to you on that.” More often a response that really sounds like an intelligent answer must be devised — even if it makes no sense whatsoever. Read more…

The presidential debates are over. All we’re left with now are a handful of undecided voters, a few fresh phrases for the popular lexicon (binders full of women, bayonets and horses, etc.), and these editorial cartoons.

Read more…

By Ron Laughery
Guest Commentary

Paul Ryan’s support of each state’s right to regulate marijuana puts the Romney/Ryan ticket more on the side of legalization than President Obama. While Ryan later clarified that he and Gov. Romney don’t personally support legalization, his clear statement that this issue belongs to the states is certainly more supportive than the current administration’s ongoing policy of creating ad hoc marijuana rules enforced by the heavy hand of federal agents.

Conventional wisdom says that conservatives will oppose marijuana legalization, period. However, Paul Ryan — the conservative’s conservative — tells us that states should be able to legislate their own marijuana laws, giving Coloradans affirmation that our vote on Amendment 64 is valid and just. What gives?

“What gives” is that fundamental conservative philosophies support legalizing and regulating marijuana, and established conservatives like Pat Robertson, Tom Tancredo, both of whom support outright legalization, and now Paul Ryan are doing no more than flying the flag of conservatism and leaving conventional wisdom in the dust. Read more…

By David Hurlbut
Guest Commentary

I am an independent, adamantly unaffiliated voter. And it’s not because I’m too stupid to make a decision.

Folks like myself don’t have a party apparatus behind them (unaffiliated, remember?), so I can’t speak on anyone’s behalf other than my own. But I can’t help thinking that at least a few other “U’s” in Colorado are fed up with the political establishment treating us as though we’re all not paying attention.

The problem is that party apparatchiks, talking heads, and editorial page columnists see the world through a simplistic bipolar lens: liberal or conservative; Republican or Democrat; this end good, that end bad. That’s the mindset, and if you don’t fit, you don’t count. Or worse, they’ll put one of the two labels on you anyway—if you’re not for “us,” then obviously you’re against.

The labels are seductive because they demand neither thought nor fact. The presidential media campaign provides daily examples of that. Last week, a volunteer from one of the presidential campaigns (doesn’t matter which) phoned and asked me, “Who do you think has a better approach for solving the country’s economic problems, the Republicans or the Democrats?” Read more…

By Patricia Gabow
Guest Commentary

During my time as Denver Health’s CEO, I and everyone who worked there saw the consequences of being uninsured in America. While Denver Health provided top quality to care to everyone including the vulnerable, the poor and the uninsured not every city in Colorado or in the United States has a Denver Health.

Therefore, as a physician and former leader of a safety net institution, I was heartened by the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which has been dubbed Obamacare. President Obama is right to be proud that this historic new law bears his name.

Before Obamacare, 50 million Americans were uninsured. We were spending twice as much as other developed countries, but we were receiving a grade of 65 out of 100 on various quality measures, including access to care.

Obamacare lays the groundwork to fix these shortcomings — shortcomings many would believe to be impossible in the richest, most powerful nation in the world. Read more…

By Meg Eckert
Guest Commentary

I am a teacher … My days are spent nurturing 32 students (a number I have never seen in 18 years of teaching); helping them not only to read, write, compute, learn science, and be responsible citizens; but also to think, gain self esteem, make new friends, overcome obstacles facing them in their everyday and academic lives, find motivation, organize their materials, and feel safe to take academic risks.

I am a teacher … My job is not only to teach, but it is also to create and nurture relationships. It is my job to develop a personal relationship with each child by connecting with them personally, but even more importantly, to help them connect with their peers.

I am a teacher … My job is not only to teach, but it is also important that I work with parents to recognize strengths and successes in their children, and together search for answers to plan their child’s year. Read more…

You mean film stars Darryl Hannah and Mariel Hemingway managed to draw all of 200 people Tuesday to Denver’s Civic Center to protest hydraulic fracturing? Why, you could probably get 200 people out to protest fluoridated water.

Still, the protest was instructive in one respect. As The Denver Post reported, “speaking to the crowd Tuesday, Sam Schabacker, an organizer with Food and Water Watch, said, ‘Fracking has no place in Colorado.’”

Notice: No place. He doesn’t want it regulated more rigorously. He wants it banned — and, since the vast majority of wells are now fracked, with it would go much of the oil and gas industry in Colorado.

But look on the bright side: Maybe without oil and gas we wouldn’t have to endure so many energy intensive visits from Hollywood activists.

By Tom Coyne
Guest Commentary

The United States continues to face the challenge of reducing the high levels of private and public sector debt we have accumulated in recent years. We have a limited number of options: we can attempt to inflate away the debt, default on our obligations to repay it, impose extended austerity to reduce it, or grow our way out of it. Clearly, the latter is most people’s first choice. But how can we increase the rate at which our national and state economies grow?

In the short term, many initiatives have been proposed to accomplish this, such as improving public infrastructure, reducing regulatory burdens, and increasing support for research and entrepreneurs. In the medium-term, however, the potential growth impact of just one initiative dwarfs all others: improving the performance of our public schools (see, for example, The High Cost of Low Educational Performance, published by the OECD).

To varying degrees, many well-known recommendations are already being implemented to improve the educational outcomes achieved by the average student, including better teacher preparation, selection, evaluation, and compensation; more rigorous standards and better curriculum; and better use of technology for instruction, feedback, and parental involvement. All of these initiatives merit our continued support. However there is another area where our public schools also need to improve that is just as critical, not just for faster GDP growth, but also for the future success of our individual businesses: the way the Colorado educates our most cognitively gifted students. Read more…