Happy Wednesday, Colorado, and welcome to The Temperature.
With much of Colorado getting a good soaking of rain or dumping of snow, allow me to officially be the 10,000th person to say to you: “Yeah, but we need the moisture.”
As one of our linked stories below illustrates, it’s an up-and-down water year across the state with wildfire season looming. Every little dribble helps.
We’re just a little over a week away from Colorado SunFest 2025, and in addition to the panel previewed below, we have a ton of other cool talks and informational sessions — including one on water featuring friend-of-The-Temperature Jerd Smith. It should be a lot of fun.
Now let’s don those galoshes and splooshy-stomp our way into the news.
John Ingold
Reporter
TEMP CHECK
COLORADO SUNFEST 2025
Can you find better happiness through neuroscience? We’ll explore at SunFest!
A shot from panel discussion during Colorado SunFest 2024. We’ll be back at the University of Denver Josef Korbel School of International Studies next week for SunFest 2025. (Andy Colwell, Special to The Colorado Sun)“It’s about also experiencing those emotions that engage us with the world and engage us with other people.”
— University of Colorado professor June Gruber
Why is happiness so elusive? Maybe it’s because focusing too much on your own happiness as a goal is counterproductive, says University of Colorado Boulder professor June Gruber.
Gruber is a professor of psychology and neuroscience, and her research focuses on positive emotions — both in the healthy sense, such as happiness, but also in psychological disorders like bipolar disorder. In recent years, she has also gained attention for teaching a wildly popular class on happiness at CU.
“A lot of the way we hear about happiness and positivity, especially in a more westernized or individualistic context, is very self-centered,” Gruber told the CU podcast “The Ampersand” in 2023.
But that overly internal focus can push out other emotions and deeper connections, making the quest for happiness a treadmill that never shuts off. To find deeper happiness, she says, look outward.
“I think it’s about also experiencing those emotions that engage us with the world and engage us with other people,” Gruber said on the podcast.
This sounds like a perfect excuse for a get-together — say next Friday, May 16, at the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies?
It’s SunFest time, friends! And this year, I will be talking with Gruber about the science of happiness and how you — yes, YOU! — can harness this wisdom to live a more fulfilled life.
Our convo will cover the fallacy of “toxic positivity,” the power of compassion, and why happiness needs a little darkness to shine its brightest. There will also be plenty of time to answer your questions.
The panel is scheduled for 10 a.m. You can purchase tickets at ColoradoSun.com/Colorado-Sunfest. (Sun members and students get hefty discounts.)
Hope to see you there!
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE
Colorado forging ahead with environmental justice work
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment building in Glendale. (Olivia Sun, The Colorado Sun)$3.2 million
The combined amount of 10 grants distributed to projects across the state
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment this week announced millions of dollars in grants to improve health in historically disadvantaged communities, continuing work on environmental justice as the Trump administration slashes funding at the federal level.
The grants come from CDPHE’s Environmental Justice Grant Program, which was created as part of a 2021 bill intended to help communities disproportionately impacted by pollution or climate change. This is the third round of funding from the program, and it’s the biggest one yet.
The grants, going toward 10 projects across the state, total more than $3 million. Previous cycles saw total grant amounts of around $1 million.
“We’re thrilled to once again provide support to organizations that are committed to uplifting communities and ensuring Coloradans, no matter where they live, can thrive and lead healthy lives,” Lesly Fajardo-Feaux, the co-chair of CDPHE’s Environmental Justice Advisory Board, said in a statement. “This funding demonstrates our commitment to empowering those most impacted by Colorado’s environmental challenges, amplifying underrepresented voices, and building a healthier future for everyone.”
Among the projects receiving grants this year are:
A program by the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe to protect tribal wetlands, A program by the Southern Ute Indian Tribe to prevent water pollution, A project by the University of Colorado to improve indoor air quality and reduce heat stress in classrooms in the Adams 14 School District in Commerce City, A project to redirect an arroyo away from Montrose Regional Health in order to protect the hospital’s infrastructure, A program by the Pueblo Housing Authority to conduct testing and mitigation work in housing units to reduce the risk of second-hand exposure to methamphetamine, and A program by the Barton Institute to increase local food production in northwestern Aurora.More information about the grants and the grantees is available on the Environmental Justice Grant Program’s website.
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
INSURANCE
A big health insurance price spike looms as a major bill dies
People move through the Colorado Capitol in Denver on March 6. (Jesse Paul, The Colorado Sun)“If there are looming funding shortfalls, we believe that calls for broader stakeholder engagement and public review.”
— Kevin McFatridge, executive director of the Colorado Association of Health Plans
Coloradans who buy health insurance on the open market could be facing a major price jump next year, with the death of a bill in the legislature that was intended to soften the blow.
This gets suuuuuper technical, so we’ll take it step by step.
1. Many people who buy insurance on their own get subsidies from the federal government to help pay the costs of their premiums. In recent years, that help has been boosted by special, enhanced subsidies created as part of a pandemic stimulus bill. Those enhanced subsidies have taken the sting out of rising health care and insurance costs post-pandemic for many folks. Roughly 80% of the nearly 300,000 people who bought an insurance plan for this year through the state’s marketplace, Connect for Health Colorado, received a subsidy.
2. The enhanced subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year, unless Congress extends them. While there is some bipartisan support for extending the subsidies, states are still preparing as if the subsidies will go away.
3. In Colorado, losing these subsidies could create a secondary hit to a different insurance affordability program. That program is reinsurance, in which the state helps insurers pay high-cost claims so those insurers can reduce premium prices for everybody. Money for the program comes from a fee on insurers and also from the federal government.
4. The federal money is the key here. The state receives it because the reinsurance program holds down premium prices, meaning the federal government spends less on insurance subsidies than it would without reinsurance in place. The feds send a portion of that savings — typically hundreds of millions of dollars a year — to Colorado, which uses it to fund reinsurance and also to pay for a separate state subsidy program.
5. If the enhanced subsidies go away, the feds won’t be on the hook for paying as much out. That means reinsurance will generate less savings for the feds, leading to smaller amounts of money coming back to Colorado to fund the program. (And this is assuming the Trump administration continues this pass-through funding system — at last check, the money promised to the state for this year still hasn’t arrived.)
6. To make up for this, the state Division of Insurance backed House Bill 1297. The bill would have upped the fee on insurers by a percentage point to make up for the money lost due to the end of the enhanced subsidies. The bill would have also reallocated where some of the fee money goes, including increasing support to a state program that provides subsidies to people who are not eligible for federal ones because of their immigration status. (Tensions flared over this part.)
7. The bill died in committee Tuesday. As a result, it does not appear that Colorado will come up with any extra money to make up for the likely hit to the reinsurance program caused by the looming end of the enhanced federal subsidies.
8. This could set up a major insurance price increase driven by a number of factors. While it’s not certain this will happen, here’s what it might look like: Health costs continue to rise, so insurance prices will, too. The reinsurance program may shrink, meaning it won’t be able to hold down those prices as much as in previous years. Consumers will receive less in subsidies, meaning they will have to pay a bigger chunk of those premiums. And some consumers will lose their subsidies altogether, creating a catastrophic increase especially for those living in mountain communities.
9. But the head of the state’s health insurer trade group, which opposed the bill, said he hopes the failure of House Bill 1297 “opens the door to a broader conversation about how Colorado funds healthcare affordability in a way that’s transparent, equitable, and structurally sound.” Kevin McFatridge, the executive director of the Colorado Association of Health Plans, also added in an email that the state should reconsider the approach of using fees on insurers to fund affordability programs — those fees, themselves, increase premium prices, he said. And he said the state hasn’t been transparent enough to determine whether concerns about an impending insurance calamity are valid. “If there are looming funding shortfalls, we believe that calls for broader stakeholder engagement and public review,” McFatridge said.
Insurers in the individual market — that’s the open market where people buy coverage on their own — have to file their proposed 2026 rates with the state in the coming weeks, with finalized rates coming out by late summer, early fall. So the next few months will tell whether these dire predictions come true.
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
MORE ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH NEWS
Colorado moms in crisis, jobs lost: The human cost of Trump’s addiction funding cuts. When the Trump administration cut more than $11 billion in COVID-era funds to states in late March, addiction recovery programs, including many in Colorado, were hit hard, Aneri Pattani writes.— KFF Health News More than 100 people were fired from the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden as part of Trump administration cuts. The staff laid off include employees and subcontractors in both research and operations at NREL, which has roughly 3,000 employees, Michael Booth reports.— The Colorado Sun Southwestern Colorado farmers expect a third of their normal water supply following a dry winter. With low snowpack and dry soils, water users in southwestern Colorado are bracing for a tough year, while other parts of the state — including Denver — appear they will fare better, Shannon Mullane writes.— The Colorado Sun Could Trump actually revive Colorado’s coal industry? Colorado’s coal industry — nudged out by natural gas, renewable energy sources and government regulation — is a fraction of what it once was. But industry advocates see an opening for revival in the Trump administration, Michael Booth writes.— The Colorado Sun Screening teens for depression in primary care is a money-saver in the long run. Researchers from the Colorado School of Public Health conducted an analysis in which they found that routine, annual screenings for depression in teens is a cost-effective way to address mental health challenges.— JAMA Health Forum The Trump administration is spending $500 million to develop a universal flu vaccine, and many outside scientists are puzzled. For one, the candidate vaccine uses an approach thought to be outdated. “It’s so last-generation, or first-generation, it’s mind-blowing,” one scientist said.— KFF Health NewsCHART OF THE WEEK
Click the image to go to the full KFF polling report. (KFF)File this under Not Really Surprising But Still Astonishing: In the span of just a few months, Democrats and Republicans have experienced dramatic shifts in how they view the trustworthiness of federal government health agencies when it comes to information about vaccines.
In September 2023, 86% of Democrats said they have a great deal or a fair amount of trust in the Food and Drug Administration, and 88% said they had trust in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a tracking poll by the nonpartisan health policy thinktank KFF. Asked the same questions last month, roughly 100 days into the second presidency of Donald Trump and the rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to the nation’s top health job, those numbers for Democrats had fallen, to 67% for the FDA and 70% for the CDC.
At the same time, Republicans’ trust in the agencies has increased — to 52% from 42% for the FDA and to 51% from 40% for the CDC.
This is just one of the interesting findings in KFF’s latest poll. Among the others:
Only Republicans trust Trump and Kennedy to provide reliable information about vaccines; trust for the pair among independents is 35% and 30%, respectively, while it is much lower among Democrats. Americans of all stripes aren’t super-confident in the ability of federal health agencies to do their jobs. Only a minority said they have a lot or some confidence in the agencies’ ability to ensure the safety of prescription drugs and vaccines, respond to disease outbreaks, and act independently. Confidence in the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella remains high — 83% say they are very or somewhat confident in its safety, the highest level recorded for any vaccine. Democrats have the most confidence in the vaccine, but 79% of Republicans also said they are very or somewhat confident that the vaccine is safe. The COVID-19 vaccine is another story, though: Only 56% say they are very or somewhat confident in its safety, including only 30% of Republicans.You can read the entire polling report on KFF’s website.
Section by John Ingold | Reporter
Thanks for meeting back here at the bottom! We just appreciate the heck out of you, and we sure hope to see you at Colorado SunFest so we can tell you that in person.
’Til next time.
— John & Michael
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