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Colorado Families Warn Medicaid Caregiver Caps Will Hurt Disabled Children
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Colorado Public Radio, Approved, State

Colorado Families Warn Medicaid Caregiver Caps Will Hurt Disabled Children

By: John Daley | CPR News With the budget in crisis, state lawmakers capped the number of hours a week a person providing care to someone else, often a family member, can be reimbursed. A series of phased in cuts started taking effect this month and impacted families expressed deep apprehension about what the coming months will bring. “Disproportionate, unfair, insensitive,” were among the words Kelly Lyons had for the change. The deadline comes with the state Medicaid program under intense scrutiny, as a new commission, set up by the legislature starts its work and a new governor will be elected in November and take office next January. She lives in Castle Rock and cares for a 16-year-old daughter, Kendall, who she said was diagnosed with an an...
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Nick Shirley’s message to Colorado: Follow the money. Knock on the doors.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Nick Shirley’s message to Colorado: Follow the money. Knock on the doors.

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Nick Shirley spent Saturday night walking the Freedom Fest audience through the questions that have taken him from hotels near Denver International Airport to empty daycare centers in Minnesota and apartment complexes in Aurora. Interviewed by Jeff Hunt, co-host of the Jeff and Bill Show on Denver's 710 KNUS, Shirley spent less time talking about what he uncovered than how he uncovered it. Colorado was one of the first places he looked Long before a Minnesota daycare investigation made him nationally known, Shirley found himself in Colorado after repeatedly hearing migrants at the southern border mention the same destination. Denver. He came to look.  "You guys are from Latin America? It's cold in Denver," he remembered asking....
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Repeated Brush Fires Near Aurora RTD Station Spark Arson Investigation
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Approved, CBS Colorado, Local

Repeated Brush Fires Near Aurora RTD Station Spark Arson Investigation

By Michael Abeyta | CBS Colorado Over the last two weeks, fires have popped up in an open space area in the eastern part of the Denver metro area very close to homes. Aurora Fire Rescue says they are being investigated as intentionally set fires. The fires are happening near RTD's Dayton Station just north of Interstate 225. Aurora Fire says they and the Denver Fire Department have responded to several vegetation fires in the area recently because the City of Aurora, City of Denver and City of Greenwood Village share jurisdictional boundaries around the RTD station. Aurora investigators believe the first fire happened around 5 p.m. on June 10. On that day there were two or three separate fires burning. The most recent incident was a fire on Friday June 19. There...
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Colorado Medicaid Freezes Payments to Home Health Agency Facing Fraud Investigation
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Colorado Politics, Approved, State

Colorado Medicaid Freezes Payments to Home Health Agency Facing Fraud Investigation

By: David Migoya | Colorado Politics The agency overseeing Colorado’s federal Medicaid program has suspended an Aurora home-health agency that is the focus of an investigation into an enterprise that lured dozens of homeless people with promises of free housing and cash and reaped tens of millions of dollars in Medicaid reimbursements. Officials said it has stopped paying Medicaid claims filed by On Going Home Health Care pending the outcome of its inquiry into “The Program,” an elaborate and intertwined confederation of businesses that provided shelter, money and prescriptions to homeless participants in return for billing the federal program for administering the drugs. The Program was the center of a Denver Gazette investigation last month that exposed how On Going ...
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Colorado Seniors Feel Heat as Xcel Seeks Double-Digit Rate Increase
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DENVER7, Approved, State

Colorado Seniors Feel Heat as Xcel Seeks Double-Digit Rate Increase

By: Maggie Bryan | Denver7 Xcel Energy is proposing electric and gas rate increases that would raise the average customer's bill by about 10% as early as August. DENVER — Some Coloradans are facing tough decisions as they try to stay cool during this week's heat wave, especially those on fixed incomes. Jimmy Cano and his wife, who live in Aurora, received a free portable air conditioning unit Tuesday night thanks to local nonprofit Bright Leaf, an organization that provides food assistance and other resources for seniors in the City and County of Denver. "Usually right at this time, I would probably be sitting here dripping sweat," Cano said. He said the portable AC unit has been a game changer for them as their home does not have a central AC system. B...
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Dark Money Groups Pour Millions Into Key Colorado Democratic Primary Battles
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The Colorado Sun, Approved, State

Dark Money Groups Pour Millions Into Key Colorado Democratic Primary Battles

By Jesse Paul | The Colorado Sun The dollars are aimed at helping more moderate candidates beat their more liberal opponents, including a handful of incumbents. It’s paying for ads and mailers in districts across the Denver area and one in the high country. About $2 million in untraceable money has flowed into a handful of Democratic statehouse primaries in recent weeks to help more moderate candidates beat their more liberal opponents, including several incumbents. The funds come from three nonprofits that don’t have to report their donors and are being routed through a convoluted web of eight state-level super PACs, some of which have names that appear aimed at deceiving people into thinking they are grassroots organizations. The dark money is paying for ads and ma...
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Colorado Probes Claims of Cash Incentives Linked to Medicaid Services for Homeless Residents
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Colorado Politics, Approved, Local

Colorado Probes Claims of Cash Incentives Linked to Medicaid Services for Homeless Residents

By: David Migoya | Colorado Politics Editor’s Note: This story is part of a series. Read about how home health in Colorado is a complex setupand about the group On Going HHC. They call it “the program.” For the past four years, dozens of homeless people in the Denver metro area have been recruited to live rent-free in suburban houses sprinkled across Aurora — not the stereotypical homeless shelter-type housing one might think, but rather neat homes in middle-class communities with mortgages. But living there comes with a hitch: a requirement that participants be on Medicaid and have at least one prescribed medication — all must first visit the same doctor to get a cursory exam and a prescription — administered by a home health company for which the doctor ...
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Aurora Councilmember And Public Safety Chair Pleads Guilty To DUI
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DENVER7, Approved, Local

Aurora Councilmember And Public Safety Chair Pleads Guilty To DUI

By Robert Garrison | Denver7 AURORA, Colo. — Aurora Councilmember Rob Andrews pleaded guilty Tuesday to DUI under a plea deal, avoiding jail time in his January arrest. After his plea, the newly elected councilmember was sentenced to 10 days of home detention, 12 months of probation and 48 hours of community service. Andrews was arrested on the evening of Jan. 18 on suspicion of DUI after an Aurora officer reported seeing his Ford F‑250 splitting lanes and making wide turns on S. Chambers Road, police said. READ THE FULL ARTICLE AT DENVER7
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Patti Fox’s daughter was building a life. A driver ran a stop sign.
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Rocky Mountain Voice, State, Top Stories

Patti Fox’s daughter was building a life. A driver ran a stop sign.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice Something woke Patti Fox at midnight. She looked at her phone screen and saw missed calls going back to 10:15 p.m. A friend of Carissa's had called over and over from Chicago. He'd been tracking her on a location app and saw that she'd been moved to a hospital.  Fox started calling hospitals in Aurora. Getting anyone to tell her anything was its own fight. Carissa didn't have her driver's license on her that night and had been checked in as a Jane Doe. When Fox finally located her at HCA Health One, the message from staff was short. "They said, ‘get here,’" Fox told RMV. With two kids in tow and her husband Daniel beside her, Fox drove an hour and a half south in the dark. "The whole time I was just praying ...
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Aurora Limits Police Communication Raising Questions Over Public Safety And Transparency
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Approved, Local, The Denver Gazette

Aurora Limits Police Communication Raising Questions Over Public Safety And Transparency

By Kyla Pearce | The Denver Gazette Proponents argue arestees have a right to privacy until adjudicated An Aurora City Council decision to alter social media policies for the police department has raised concerns from press freedom and public safety advocates, who worry that limiting what police can release to the public will impact safety and limit media professionals’ ability to access crime information. City Council members and local activists who support the policy changes, however, say they are not intended to limit information sharing, but rather to protect due process and limit what they describe as “harmful editorializing” in police communications. The resolution, which passed Monday with four “no” votes from the city’s conservative lawmakers, would bar Aurora Police Depart...
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