Critics say socialized medicine could lead to rationing. The less filtered doomsayers, think former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, fear death panels would make life-and-death decisions in a system commanded by the government.
Anyone quick to dispense with these warnings should consider Colorado House Bill 1232, working its way through the legislature and set for a committee hearing on Wednesday.
HB-1232 is the public option for health care advocated by leading Democrats, including Gov. Jared Polis.
Socialized health care advocates who roll their eyes at warnings of rationing and death panels are technically correct. No one even self-described socialists wants a law establishing rationing or death panels.
Colorado appears poised to reap some of the benefits from the sprawling $2 trillion infrastructure proposal unveiled by President Joe Biden last week.
The president on Wednesday unveiled details of the package in an address at a carpenters union training center in Pittsburgh, touting it as one that “people are going to look back and say this is the moment when America won the future.”
“It’s a once-in-a-generation investment in America unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago,” he said. “In fact, it’s the largest American jobs investment since World War II. It will create millions of jobs, good-paying jobs.”
Colorado prison administrators are willing to shell out more than $3 million to overcome vaccine reluctance among prison workers, calling it a small price to pay to avert ongoing impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic.
In an effort to lift inoculation rates, the state Department of Corrections told its 6,200 prison employees in late March they were each eligible to receive a one-time payment of $500 for proof they’ve been vaccinated.
In a memo announcing the incentive, DOC Executive Director Dean Williams cited March 25 data showing that only 38% of prison system staff had reported receiving both doses of the vaccine, despite having access to it for several months. The poor buy-in could prolong health risks and imperil efforts to safely scale back restrictions, according to the memo, obtained by The Gazette.
As COVID’s school closures have dragged on for the past year, parents wanting their children back in the classroom have found themselves stymied by teacher unions and the public education bureaucracy. There were few alternatives to letting their kids languish in remote learning.
But some Douglas County parents decided they weren’t going to take “no” for an answer. They mounted a recall effort against four members of the Douglas County School Board, which had kept the district’s middle schools and high schools closed.
In January, parent Nate Ormond began organizing other community members. A successful entrepreneur, Ormond pledged $100,000 of his own money toward the recall in hopes of returning students to the classroom. He explained that he had planned to dedicate that money to private-school tuition for his daughter but then decided to spend it on getting every Douglas County student back into the classroom instead.
Is a dead person still required to pay restitution to his victim?
That is the question the Colorado Supreme Court will take up, after announcing on Monday it will hear a matter involving a criminal defendant who died during his appeal, prompting a lower court to expunge the entire case, including a restitution order. Known as “abatement ab initio,” the legal doctrine results in defendants having no charges on their record if they happen to die after a conviction, but before the final outcome of their appeal.
The origins of the doctrine are unclear, and some states have never honored it, wrote Timothy A. Razel in a 2007 paper on the subject. Razel referenced the case of former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay, who died of a heart attack in 2005 in Colorado after being convicted for conspiracy and fraud. A federal judge later dismissed a restitution claim from one of Lay’s victims, pointing out that the tens of millions of dollars the government might try to recoup from Lay were off limit