Page coordinator: John Valvano
HCAC Statewide Board of Directors
HCAC is nonprofit organization administered by an all-volunteer Board of Directors. Board members can be individually contacted by email through the HCAC website at: info@healthcareforallColorado.org .
Meet HCAC's current Board of Directors: Irene Aguilar, MD - President Born and raised in inner-city Chicago, Dr. Aguilar attended Washington University in St. Louis , spending one year studying abroad in England . Dr. Aguilar received her medical degree from the University of Chicago-Pritzker School of Medicine in 1985. She performed her residency training in Internal Medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, where she met her husband Thomas W. Bost, M.D. After traveling in the third world for one year, Dr. Aguilar returned to Denver where she has worked as a Primary Care Provider at the Westside Family Health Center since 1989. In 1993, Dr. Aguilar was appointed to the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners (CBME), on which she served for 8 years. Drs. Aguilar and Bost are parents of 3 children, including a daughter with special health care needs served under the Medicaid Waiver program for children. In 2006, Governor Owens appointed Dr. Aguilar to the Colorado Developmental Disabilities Council, an organization that advocates for the establishment and implementation of public policy which will further the independence, productivity and integration of people with developmental disabilities. She works on the Executive and Public Policy Committee for the Council. In this capacity, she was chosen for Colorado Blue Ribbon Commission’s Vulnerable Populations Task Force, which she co-chaired. Learning about health insurance and its impact on health care for Vulnerable Populations led Dr. Aguilar to become an advocate for health care reform. Dr. Aguilar is on Medicaid’s Long Term Care Advisory Committee and is working with state legislators on a committee to study Health Care for Vulnerable Populations.
Dave Bean, Vice President
It wasn't until after Dave worked for insurance companies for many years and finally started his own webmaster service provider company in 1999, that he realized that our health care system is broken. First he tried Colorado's group of one health insurance and did get the policy, even though it was obvious that the company did not wish to group of insurance and continued coverage until the company stopped selling in Colorado. Since that time Dave has purchased individual insurance, but policies are not designed to be long-term, but to eventually force participants out of the plans and through the underwriting process - again and again. Eventually, when we really need insurance Dave is aware that they coverage may not be there and is working to change the system. The US Health Care System is a nightmare for small businesses.
Dave is currently the Co-Chair of the Denver Chapter of Health Care For All Colorado.
Anne Courtright, MD Secretary
Anne Courtright, MD is a retired psychiatrist living in Pueblo. She was director of the Northeastern Division of the Colorado State Hospital from 1962 to 1970. Dr. Courtright was in private practice in Pueblo from 1970 to 1986, and was a staff psychiatrist at the Institute of Forensic Psychiatry from 1986 until her retirement in 1992. Since 2000, Dr. Courtright has been an active community volunteer, serving on the Community Advisory Committee for the Colorado Mental Health Institute at Pueblo (CMHIP), the League of Women Voters in Pueblo, Step UP and the Mental Health Association of Pueblo. Ivan J. Miller, Ph.D. Treasurer
Ivan Miller is a psychologist who has worked in health care reform as an advocate for consumers and professionals since 1994. Since the beginning of his work, he and his colleagues have said, “There must be a better way to provide health care in the U.S.” Believing that single payer was the foundation for curing the health care system, he and his colleagues thought that traditional single payer still needed improvement and flexibility. Collaborating with consumers and professionals, he gradually developed a hybrid model of health care reform, called Balanced Choice, that inserts some market forces in a single payer system, and in 2006, published a book, Balanced Choice: A Common Sense Cure for the U.S. Health Care Systems, a proposal designed to serve consumers, benefit providers, and relieve employers. As a prior Hospital and Hospital Alternative Program Manager for the Boulder County Mental Health Center, Executive Director of the National Coalition of Mental Health Professionals and Consumers, Inc., and Chair of the Board of the Patient Advocacy Coalition, and as an ongoing President of the Boulder Psychotherapists Guild, Inc., Executive Director of Balanced Choice Health Care, Inc., Co-Chair of the Interdivisional (39/42) Task Force on Managed Care and Health Care Reform in the American Psychological Association, and owner of his private practice as a psychologist for 23 years, he brings a wealth of business, nonprofit, and government management experience, from the roles of patient, provider, employer, and government, to help him serve in his position as Treasurer of HCAC.
Elinor T. Christiansen, MD
Elinor Christiansen, MD is a retired physician whose career has included private medical practice doing general medicine, inner-city maternal and child health clinics, college health for twenty years at a university with a mandatory health fee and single-payer universal health insurance plan, medical administration, clinical teaching, and rural community health clinics in underserved communities in the mountains west of Denver. Dr. Christiansen's passion for universal healthcare through single-payer insurance grows out of her wealth of personal and professional experiences. She has traveled to Norway, Finland, Netherlands and Scotland to study their national health plans and learned first-hand of their problems and their successes. Dr. Christiansen is a member of the Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) and the American Medical Women's Association (AMWA), having served as its national President in 2002. She also served for three years as President of the Board of Directors of Health Care for All Colorado and is currently the President of the Board of Directors of the Health Care for All Colorado Foundation. Ken Connell
Co-chair, Denver HCAC ChapterLyn Gullette, PhD Dr. Gullette is a clinical psychologist with a private practice in Louisville, Colorado. She has worked as a psychologist in a variety of agencies--mental health; alcohol recovery; domestic violence--and in a psychiatric hospital and in public schools. She has worked and lived in rural Colorado, in an industrial city in Colorado, and in Boulder. She currently also works on health care reform by volunteering as Board Member and Program Director of Balanced Choice Health Care, Inc. "I've seen health care coverage problems from many angles, and consider it a privilege to participate in the problem-solving process."
Lydia Guzman
Co-chair, Denver HCAC Chapter
Nathan J. Wilkes
Nathan Wilkes was so worried about the possible effects of Bush administration health care proposals on his ability to provide coverage for his chronically ill son that he decided to travel to the national capital to voice his concerns. A computer network security expert who earns over $100,000 a year, Wilkes works for a private firm outside of Denver which fits into the large-group insurance category and is allowed to shop around for different providers each year. But when his son Thomas, born with severe hemophilia, developed a resistance to treatment at age 1, Wilkes's health care claims soared; his company's insurance provider soon began hiking premiums 40 to 55 percent each year and introduced a lifetime cap of $1 million for all employees and their families, including Thomas. Soon, no other insurance companies would offer to cover the company. Worried he would no longer be able to provide coverage for his son, Wilkes turned to state and local groups for help. Physicians for a National Health Program took up his cause and brought him to Washington D.C, where he hoped to persuade Congress to reject the Bush adminsitrartion's plan in favor of universal health care legislation.
Barry Karlin
Dr. Karlin began his public health career with a BS in Environmental Health from UCLA, followed by an MPH in Environmental Health & Health Education from UC/Berkeley. Later, he received a Dr. P.H. from U. Michigan. He served USAID in rural Thailand for 6 years, as a Family Planning Advisor for the Population Council of NY in Pakistan for 3 years, and as Health Education Advisor to Papua New Guinea for W.H.O. for 4 years. He has consulted in dozens of countries. In addition, he served the American Public Health Association International Health Division for 8 years. He has been an Associate Professor of global health (Adjunct) at CU for 3 years, including taking graduate health classes to developing countries to study their health care systems. Dr. Karlin served for 8 years as the volunteer coordinator of tobacco education in Boulder. He can be reached at BarryKarlin@HealthCareForAllColorado.org
Barry is Chair of the Greater Boulder HCAC Chapter.
Jim Worthy
Dick Barkey HCAC Program Administrator
Dick has most recently served as the Chair of the Jefferson County Democratic party. He was also a founder of Be the Change USA, a progressive grassroots organization.
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