By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

January 11, 2008

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter’s first State of the State speech was about dreams. His second was about reality.

In comparison to the bold vision he showed in 2007, Ritter offered caution in Thursday’s speech to a joint session of the General Assembly. In some ways, it reflected the lessons learned in his first year in office. But it still felt like a call to keep expectations low.

The most glaring example came on the issue of health care reform, perhaps the most important issue facing Americans today.

Here’s what Ritter said about health care reform in 2007:

“My long-term vision is to establish a Colorado Health Plan that provides every Coloradan with access to some basic form of health insurance and health care by 2010.”

Here’s what Ritter said about health care reform in 2008:

“We have to keep addressing that, and we have to keep doing it in a way that acknowledges the fiscal constraints of this state … We have we have to take a realistic, building-block, steady approach to progress.”

That sure doesn’t sound like universal health coverage by 2010.

On other critical fronts, such as the need for “21^st century transportation,” decently funded colleges and universities and kindergarten-through-high school programs that produce competent graduates and cut shameful dropout rates, the governor was also a lot more restrained than last year.

In 2007, he proclaimed goals of cutting the dropout rate in half in 10 years and halving the achievement gap between white and minority students in a decade. He also touted a study commission that would develop a transportation plan to meet a crying need for road construction and repairs and mass transit.

This year, he warned, “… we aren’t going to come up with big fixes in all of those areas all at once. It would be a fool’s errand even to try. We must make steady progress across the board, doing what is right and what we can afford.” ((more))

By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

January 10, 2008

Peter Groff made history Wednesday the way Barack Obama is trying to. Offering a message of unification, inspiration and spirituality, Groff introduced himself as the first African-American president of the Colorado Senate in much the same style Obama uses to try to become the first African-American president of the United States.

Groff’s speech on the opening day of the General Assembly mirrored his public style as a gentleman who rarely raises his voice. It incorporated a kind of quiet eloquence that hopefully signaled a change in the often acrid atmosphere of the Senate or at least a change in the tone of voice in which barbs are flung.

Before a chamber packed with African-Americans dressed as if they were going to church, Groff, a liberal Democrat, even quoted scripture.

A verse from Isaiah: “You shall be called the repairer of the breach.”

Groff was talking about breaches in education and health care and a state constitution hewn by an increasing number of conflicting mandates. But he could also have been talking about the partisan breaches in an election-year legislative session and even the divisions caused by race.

Those are too frequent and ugly.

Groff warned his colleagues not to finish the 120-day session wondering “what if we had worked together?”

He asked them to show “the political courage and political will that people need and the future demands.”

“Colorado’s mountain tops are great sources of inspiration,” Groff said, calling on fellow legislators to “ascend the summit” of bi-partisanship.

If you closed your eyes, you could almost hear Obama.

((more))

By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

January 9, 2008

As the U.S. government announced that health care spending topped $2 trillion in 2006, the Colorado General Assembly announced that it will take several years to keep a promise to provide health care coverage to all of the state’s residents.

Talk about a tale of two worlds.

In one live the politicians who break campaign promises to fix a broken health care system. In the other live the rest of us, who face the physical and financial pain of their timidity.

A year ago, in his first State of the State speech, Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter promised near-universal health coverage for Coloradans by 2010. The state’s Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Andrew Romanoff, proclaimed health care reform among his top priorities.

Now we hear fear-mongering Republicans spewing election-year verbiage about socialized medicine and the tax money needed to fix the health care system. “Most Coloradans enjoy good health insurance,” state Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhaney told colleagues during Wednesday’s opening session of the legislature.

In an article published Teusday, Democratic state Senate President Peter Groff told The Denver Post “the state doesn’t have to go for ‘the whole enchilada.’”

So as members of the state’s blue ribbon health care reform commission prepare to present five possible programs for near-universal coverage later this month, members of the state’s legislature prepare to go squirrelly. ((more))

By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

Democrat Mark Benner has declared himself a participant in the U.S. Senate race in Colorado in defiance of the wishes of his party’s hierarchy. But he’s likely to be out of the contest before he hurts fellow Democrat and presumptive candidate Mark Udall.

Benner, a member of the state’s Democratic executive committee, said that if he doesn’t get the required number of votes to get on a primary ballot at a statewide Democratic assembly, he will not try to petition his way on to the ballot.

“If I don’t get 30 percent of the votes at the state assembly in May,” Benner said, “I’m done.”

You can’t quite put a fork in him yet. Benner, a member of the Progressive Democrats of Colorado that represents his party’s left wing, will travel the state in the next couple of weeks. He will pitch his ideas about impeaching George W. Bush, withdrawing troops from Iraq, establishing a single-payer health care system, enacting campaign finance reform and stopping privatization of public services through companies such as Blackwater and Halliburton. Benner hopes to attract delegates to the Feb. 5 Democratic county caucuses.

But he won’t be calling out Udall to debate on issues as many who encouraged him to run had hoped he would. ((more))

By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

Ex-Colorado Sen. Gary Hart boarded the Dump Hillary bandwagon over the weekend. So did ex-New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley. Both endorsed Iowa caucus winner Sen. Barack Obama for President.

“As one who has struggled throughout a lifetime for restoration of idealism to American politics, I can only smile, and perhaps shed a tear of happiness, that our time may have come,” Hart wrote in a Huffington Post blog item.

Let’s put the emphasis where it should be in that quote – on the “may have.”

If Obama wins the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, he may have separated himself from the quixotic dreams of former would-be reformers.

Hart and Bradley - and to a lesser degree current national Democratic chairman Howard Dean – each tried to reinvent the Democrats in campaigns for their party’s presidential nomination.

All failed.

Hart’s lack of experience as a one-term Senator took him down in 1984. He couldn’t take care of his extra-marital monkey business with Donna Rice when he was the front runner in 1988.

Bradley’s performance on the court as a professional basketball star excited fans, but it was never flamboyant. His bookish, boring 2000 presidential campaign never scored with Democratic voters.

Dean fired up younger voters as an alternative to the status quo in 2004. The ex-Vermont governor raised tons of money on the Internet, but lost a big lead in the Iowa caucuses, then dropped New Hampshire to eventual Democratic nominee John Kerry.

Bradley’s statement Sunday endorsing Obama reflects the differences in times and personalities that may make a new kind of Democratic candidate possible. ((more))

By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

December 21, 2007

When he arrived in a rural area to practice medicine, Dr. Mark Deutchman saw his first patient before he finished unloading the moving van.

“They came to get me to help someone who had been hurt in a car wreck,” said Deutchman, a professor of family medicine at the University of Colorado Medical School.

Deutchman directs CU’s program to produce more doctors for the state’s remote counties. He tells students that offering rural health care in Colorado will mirror his experience in White Salmon, Wash., a small town in the Columbia River Gorge 60 miles east of Portland.

“In the city,” Deutchman explains, “you are overwhelmed with the ‘worried well.’ Most people in rural areas come through the door with something wrong. People tend to present later and sicker.

“Your breadth and depth of skills is a lot wider if you are a family physician in (the rural community of) Craig than in Denver.”

Folks like nurse practitioner Becky Hutcheson, who examines and treats patients in the Washington County Clinic in northeastern Colorado, offer real-life affirmation to what Deutchman says and what CU’s Rural Track program battles.

Even with two clinics – the Washington County Clinic and a satellite clinic of the Yuma District Hospital – in the county seat of Akron, there is still no doctor available in the entire county on Thursdays and Fridays.

That represents a crisis in physician interest in small-town living, not a lack of patients.

Hutcheson treats six to eight patients on an average day and up to 15 when things get really busy. The emphasis in a rural medical practice is hands-on. Hutcheson tried running a medical clinic at a Wal-Mart in Greeley.

“I hated every minute,” she said. “It was medicine by flow chart. We were not busy at all. After being independent, having to know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em, that wasn’t for me.”

On the other hand, Deutchman knows rural medicine isn’t for every doctor or perhaps even for most doctors. He admits that there are “frontier counties” in Colorado and across the country “that may never have a physician” and where the work will have to be done by physician assistants and nurse practitioners, such as Hutcheson. ((more))

By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

December 20, 2007

AKRON, Col.

Three companies tried to make money running the Washington County Clinic – Banner Health Care, Rose Medical Center and Colorado Plains Medical Center.

All failed, said nurse practitioner Becky Hutcheson.

Hutcheson treats patients at the clinic four days a week because there is no doctor available.

“When (Colorado Plains) bailed,” said Hutcheson, “it fell to the county commissioners to take it over.”

They did so in remarkable fashion, said Denise Denton, former head of the Colorado Rural Health Center. The Washington commissioners placed a new 1.5-cent sales tax on most purchases made in their county and used the money to pay for the clinic, a nursing home and an ambulance service.

No one would dare utter the words “socialized medicine” in the Republican stronghold of Washington County. But the commissioners wanted medical facilities in the county seat of Akron and a tax increase looked like the only option.

Denton called that realization a model for other rural areas.

“At some point, we decided to educate rural children and agreed to tax ourselves to pay,” said Denton, who now serves on the Colorado Rural Health Care Grants Council. “We need to do it for transportation and health.” ((more))

By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

December 19, 2007

AKRON, Col.

Kent Vance has thick hands that bear the calluses and scars of installing heating and air conditioning systems and tending his family’s century-old farm.

On this day, however, his right hand is thicker than usual. It is swollen.

It has been days since Vance cut his hand on some sheet metal. But like so many rural residents of Colorado, Vance lacks health insurance. So he almost never goes to the doctor until he faces a medical emergency.

Actually, Vance can’t even go to a doctor for an emergency. Not unless he wants to drive 35 miles or more. The Colorado Health Institute reports that only one doctor lives in Washington County, a sprawling tract of prairie in the northeastern part of the state. But no one you talk to can remember a single doctor who lives here.

So Vance sits on an examination table in the Washington County Clinic in the county seat of Akron while nurse practitioner Becky Hutcheson diagnoses an infection and sorts through which antibiotic would best treat it.

After discussing Vance’s father’s near-fatal allergy to penicillin, Hutcheson settles on Keflex.

“If your hand gets more red or if you get red streaks up your arm or if it becomes more swollen and you get pus, come back and let me know,” Hutcheson tells Vance. “If you develop a rash, take Benadryl with the antibiotic and eat before you take it.”

But, the nurse practitioner stresses, take the medicine.

“Don’t skip any doses and don’t save any pills,” she says.

Hording medicine is not just a problem in rural America. Yet out in the country, where a lack of health insurance combines with a tough-it-out farmer/rancher mentality, the country’s broken health care system seems to be shattered into a few more pieces. ((more))

By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

December 17, 2007

Democratic U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar calls it “not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.”

That has become Salazar’s way of dealing with a president who has become as much an obstructionist as an advocate.

Like many in Congress, Salazar has grown willing to take what he can get on certain critical bills, while waiting for a new resident in the White House.

George W. Bush vetoed an expansion of children’s health care for the third time last week. For a guy who never used to veto anything except embryonic stem cell research, the latest State Children’s Health Insurance Program veto was Bush’s seventh this year.

“Every time he does veto something, it ends up hurting the people of America and the people of my state,” Salazar said.

“The problem with the president is that he’s taken the attitude that ‘it’s my way or the highway.’ We share power in this country. There ought not to be only a George Bush way forward.”

There apparently isn’t. ((more))

By Jim Spencer
SpencerSpeaks.com

December 14, 2007

A controversial church-backed commercial and residential development has decided to withdraw its application to be annexed by the city of Longmont. The 348-acre Union Project was part of an effort by LifeBridge mega-church to enter the development business.

The Longmont City Council’s initial approval of the annexation of the project from Weld County sparked a grassroots’ political revolution that would have put the annexation to a vote of the people in January.

Instead, LifeBridge on Friday announced through its development arm, 4C, that it had withdrawn its request for annexation by Longmont.

“Though we believe the opposition to Union is based on misconceptions and misinformation, our goal is to serve the community, rather than divide it,” 4C official Martin Dickey said in a statement.

The council’s support for the project caused a fast, successful collection of signatures to overturn the annexation. Though only one Longmont Council member voted against annexation, questions remained among city residents about a church getting into the commercial and residential real estate business on such a grand scale, as well as concerns that the project would cost the city more than it would pay in revenues.

“This will be good for the city’s infrastructure,” opposition leader Jen Gartner said of LifeBridge backing out of the annexation fight. “We need to focus on existing needs.”

Gartner, who helped raise several thousand signatures on petitions to force a vote on the annexation, believes a January election would have overturned the council’s actions on the Union Project anyway.

“This lets people know they can have a voice,” Gartner said. “We were very successful in a very short amount of time. I hope the new council will be more responsive to the people.”

The Union issue played in November elections, which appeared to change the balance of the Longmont Council from a majority of Union supporters to a majority that questioned the project.

In his statement, Dickey said 4C and LifeBridge will continue with plans for the development that envisions retail shops and homes costing as much as $2 million. But the project will be built in Weld County.

He acknowledged the change in political sentiments in Longmont.

“Last month … a new city council was elected and they are currently in the process of defining a new direction for Longmont,” Dickey’s statement said. “Based on public statements of the majority of city council, Union does not fit into the new direction. To date, the Union annexation process has delayed construction of the project by two years and any
additional delays will impose a hardship on the congregation of LifeBridge Christian Church.”

Without annexation, the LifeBridge project will pay tens of millions of dollars more for water, according to Longmont Councilwoman Karen Benker, the only council member to vote against the annexation.

Copyright 2007 by Jim Spencer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.