Two of the treasured Previous Yr/New Yr rituals are to look again and grieve over who left us previously yr, whereas additionally gathering up any optimism and power we are able to discover to assist make optimistic change within the subsequent 12 months.
Proper after sharpening off a whole tube of chocolate-covered McVitie’s that Santa left in my stocking throughout the Previous Yr, I discovered precisely such enthusiasm for the New Yr in studying about Jimmy Carter. It wasn’t simply the sugar rush. The Washington Publish compiled a tremendous 11-item checklist of stuff you forgot or by no means knew about his presidency, and it was an impressed yarn.
Perhaps kissed Queen Elizabeth on the lips? Took late-night, drugged-out, incoherent cellphone calls from his good buddy Elvis? Dubbed the marketing campaign airplane Peanut One? Verify, to all these.
However for our functions right here at The Temperature, what caught out was that Carter responded to the oil disaster that largely ruined his time period by placing the primary photo voltaic panels on the White Home. Turning into power unbiased must be “an thrilling journey” for America, he stated.
And so it has been, and so it ought to proceed to be — previously yr at ColoradoSun.com, we’ve written about “solar trains” and geothermal swimming pools and agrivoltaics. We’ll preserve pursuing these innovation tales — in well being as properly — with enthusiasm, alongside acceptable questions on how a lot affect they will make and when. We’d love so that you can leap on the actual Solar practice with us, and ship us your story concepts as properly.
Within the meantime, get pleasure from just a few extra days of a blessed winter pause, all the way down to the final cookie.
CLIMATE
A battery-recycling mandate, and new company accountability
Portion of lifeless batteries that state Sen. Lisa Cutter says are disposed of correctly
One upcoming struggle might sound on the small facet, and one may look so large it’s exhausting to get your arms round. However each of the 2025 legislative battles we’re previewing this week are an excellent illustration of the surroundings and local weather points that preoccupy an excellent portion of Coloradans.
The “small” challenge is actually small for many of us, within the type of all these lifeless batteries you simply plucked out of final yr’s Christmas toys and ornaments and don’t know what to do with. However many Coloradans discover all recycling points to be “large,” not small, and need to see our landfill diversion charges improved and our reuse of priceless commodities elevated to have a thriving and accountable financial system.
Your family batteries usually are not imagined to go within the recycling bins or the trash. So that they both go in illicitly, and trigger fires at dwelling or in dump vans or landfills, or they only sit there corroding.
“That’s quite a lot of the issue with all these waste and recycling points is individuals simply don’t know the reply, it’s not fast. Folks simply don’t know,” state Sen. Lisa Cutter, D-Littleton, stated.
She desires battery makers to create a “producer duty group” similar to the one the legislature required a few years in the past for cardboard and paper packaging makers. The battery makers would cost themselves a small charge per battery produced, pool the charges collectively, after which flip the cash over to recycling organizations or nonprofits to create a battery recycling system for Colorado.
Don’t anticipate curbside service, Cutter warns. That will be too costly for an merchandise as small as batteries, and would simply ship out extra polluting vans into neighborhoods. Fairly, the batteries would seemingly go to safe assortment websites arrange at simply accessible areas, whether or not grocery shops or faculties or different widespread institutional websites.
Cutter likens it to the PaintCare program, the place customers can drop off outdated cans of paint and different poisonous ornament supplies at shops or neighborhood websites. Fewer than 20% of batteries are disposed of correctly, Cutter says, and it’s time to vary that.
“We’re simply type of taking one struggle proper now. So I believe that’ll assist us get this by means of,” she stated. “It’s fairly smart laws.”
One of many big-picture points belongs in the meanwhile to Rep. Manny Rutinel, D-Commerce Metropolis, who thinks Coloradans should know much more element about large firms’ share of greenhouse gasoline emissions if we need to higher assault world warming.
The invoice Rutinel will work on would require a demanding stock of greenhouse gases associated to any firm in Colorado with over $1 billion in income. They must element direct emissions, or Scope 1; emissions associated to the offsite power they use, Scope 2; and at last “provide chain and worth chain emissions,” which Rutinel says are sometimes hidden from view and are referred to as Scope 3.
Many environmental teams have been attempting for extra regulation of so-called “oblique sources,” akin to transportation, that an organization shouldn’t be accountable for instantly however might do one thing to manage. Suppose Amazon or Walmart warehouses, with all these diesel supply vans coming and going, and the way that large visitors has affected metro Denver and its ever-growing appendages of distribution facilities.
“You may’t repair what you’ll be able to’t measure,” Rutinel stated, in a textual content. “Transparency is step one towards accountability. By exposing the total scope of company emissions, this invoice offers us the instruments to carry polluters accountable and drive significant local weather motion.”
Clearly such a complete invoice, searching for motion by firms with large lobbying budgets, gained’t sail by means of with out remark. We’ll be following any greenhouse gasoline measures, the way forward for your bad-battery bucket, and lots of different environmental points within the upcoming session, so we thanks for sticking with us within the New Yr.
MORE END-OF-YEAR CLIMATE NEWS
HEALTH
340B: The obscure (however big) federal program you’re going to listen to rather a lot about
Colorado is on the verge of an enormous struggle on the state Capitol over a program you’ll have by no means heard of.
This system goes by the super-unsexy identify of 340B — who doesn’t love multibillion-dollar federal applications which might be named after sections of laws? — and it pulls collectively a battle royale of well being care business heavyweights: Hospitals versus pharmaceutical firms versus pharmacies versus insurers.
Throughout a legislative preview session on the Colorado Well being Institute’s annual convention final month, CHI communications director Joe Hanel stated the upcoming 340B wars could also be the lobbying struggle of the legislative session and solely considerably jokingly stated the rumor is that one-half of the state’s lobbying corps has been employed by the hospitals and the opposite half employed by pharma.
So what the heck is that this program? It’s a prescription drug low cost program that advantages hospitals that deal with quite a lot of Medicaid sufferers.
340B is a part of the duct-tape-and-chewing-gum system the federal authorities makes use of to assist these hospitals make up for the truth that Medicaid typically doesn’t pay them sufficient to cowl what it prices to supply providers.
Pharmaceutical firms are required to take part in it and provide reductions to eligible hospitals if additionally they need to take part within the Medicaid system. Hospitals change into eligible by having a sure share of their sufferers lined by Medicaid. Apart from the prices of administering this system, the federal authorities doesn’t spend any taxpayer {dollars} on it.
This system requires pharma producers to permit eligible hospitals to purchase sure medication at a steep low cost. The reductions apply solely to outpatient medication — prescriptions disbursed at a pharmacy for sufferers to take dwelling.
Hospitals can nonetheless cost sufferers and insurers their regular charge for the drug, which means the low cost creates quite a lot of extra cash for the hospital.
This may translate to tens of millions or tens of tens of millions of {dollars} per yr for a hospital, permitting it to spice up its backside line and likewise present neighborhood advantages, together with charity care and drug financial savings applications. As a result of lots of the hospitals that take part in this system run on skinny margins — the results of treating so many Medicaid sufferers — the cash from 340B might be important.
Chris Thomas, the president and CEO of Neighborhood Hospital in Grand Junction, stated 340B brings in $12 million to $14 million a yr for his hospital. His total year-end revenue margin is way much less, within the low single-digit tens of millions. So seeing a reduce in 340B may very well be devastating.
“That is the distinction between Neighborhood Hospital being, I assume, an ongoing entity,” he stated.
All advised, the monetary profit to Colorado hospitals from 340B seemingly stretches into the a whole bunch of tens of millions of {dollars}.
So why the controversy across the program?
Effectively, although it’s been round for the reason that early Nineteen Nineties, it has grown enormously in a short while. In 2023, there have been greater than $66 billion price of discounted purchases by means of the 340B program, up 50% from simply two years prior.
Through the years, Congress has expanded the sorts of hospitals and well being care amenities that may take part in this system. And people suppliers have contracted with a much bigger variety of pharmacies, making much more gross sales topic to 340B reductions. It’s the expansion of those so-called contract pharmacies that fuels the struggle.
Kevin Forbush, the 340B program director for the Intermountain Well being hospital system, stated some hospitals don’t have in-hospital retail pharmacies the place sufferers can decide up a prescription upon discharge. Which means the hospital would wish to contract with an outdoor pharmacy to get the affected person their meds.
Contracting with quite a lot of pharmacies additionally permits sufferers to get their drugs nearer to dwelling or by means of a pharmacy OK’d by their insurer, Forbush stated. And, due to vertical integration, hospitals now should contract with entire pharmacy networks, bringing A LOT of pharmacies into this system.
In accordance with a reality sheet by the pharmaceutical lobbying group PhRMA, Colorado has roughly 60 hospitals taking part within the 340B program. However these hospitals are linked with greater than 1,000 contract pharmacies, a few of that are primarily based out-of-state.
To pharma advocates, these contract pharmacies bloat this system and warp its intent. They are saying the advantages some hospitals obtain from 340B far outweigh what the hospitals present in charity care. They usually query whether or not all of this actually helps sufferers.
“At this time, the 340B program has change into much less about sufferers and extra about boosting the underside strains of hospitals and for-profit pharmacies,” PhRMA writes on a web site dedicated to the problem.
In response, pharmaceutical producers have began attempting to restrict hospitals’ use of contract pharmacies. And in response to that, some states have handed legal guidelines blocking pharma firms from limiting the usage of contract pharmacies.
And that brings us again to the approaching struggle in Colorado.
The Colorado Hospital Affiliation and its member hospitals this yr are planning to push a invoice that may prohibit limits on contract pharmacies within the state. Pharma firms are anticipated to fiercely oppose. Anticipate numerous advertisements.
“That is going to be a struggle on the Capitol,” stated Zach Zaslow, the vice chairman for advocacy and neighborhood well being at Youngsters’s Hospital Colorado. “That is going to be a contentious dialog.”
MORE STORIES TO WATCH
MORE HEALTH NEWS
Right here’s a professional tip for these of you experiencing post-stocking-stuffer malaise: World Market, with places in Fort Collins, Boulder, Colorado Springs and the Denver metro space, sells McVitie’s biscuits year-round. Swinging on by for somewhat vacation cheer all year long is a New Yr’s decision we are able to all preserve.
Thanks once more for supporting unbiased journalism in Colorado. We’ll preserve it coming in 2025.
— Michael & John
Corrections & Clarifications
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