Legislature serves up health-care solutions

DENVER — Health-care costs continue to rise, triggering acute pains not only in consumers’ wallets but in Colorado’s state budgets as well. Again this legislative session, lawmakers are seeking ways to control the bleeding.

As a portion of the state’s budget, expenses related to health care climbed from 19 percent in fiscal year 2000 to 35 percent for this fiscal year.

“Certainly we know health-care costs are exorbitant,” said Kevin Unger, president and chief executive of Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins and Medical Center of the Rockies in Loveland, “A lot of times when…