Markian Hawryluk, KFF Health News

Kevin Stansbury, the CEO of Lincoln Community Hospital in the 800-person town of Hugo, Colorado, is facing a classic Catch-22: He could boost his rural hospital’s revenues by offering hip replacements and shoulder surgeries, but the 64-year-old hospital needs more money to be able to expand its operating room to do those procedures.

The four cannabis stores, which opened after the passage of a 2016 ballot measure, have changed the fortunes of a town that made repeated losing bets on other commodities before finally hitting the jackpot with marijuana.

The Colorado board’s choice of drugs to review elucidates one of the thorniest questions the board must wrangle with: Would lowering the price tag for rare-disease medications lead manufacturers to pull out of the state or limit their availability?

Millions of Americans are blindsided by hospital bills for doctor appointments that didn’t require setting foot inside a hospital. Lawmakers in eight states, including Colorado, are considering measures to limit facility fees.

Financial pitfalls at the nation’s highest-elevation hospital serve as a cautionary tale as rural hospitals emerge from the pandemic on shaky ground.

In El Paso County, where five people were killed in a mass shooting at a nightclub in November, officials have filed relatively few emergency petitions to temporarily remove a person’s guns, with scant approvals.