Denise Beasley News Today

Kayce Atencio used to be haunted by a thought while working at a homeless shelter in downtown Denver. "It could have been me," said Atencio, 30, who lives in a small apartment with his son and daughter not far from the shelter.

Across the country, medical debt forces legions of Americans to make painful sacrifices. Many cut back on food, take on extra work, or drain retirement savings. For millions like Atencio, the health care system is threatening their very homes.

Saddled with debt from health care, many Americans are forced into painful tradeoffs. And some are losing their homes.

As cities like Denver struggle to make homes more affordable, medical debt keeps housing out of reach for millions of Americans.

As cities like Denver struggle to make homes more affordable, medical debt keeps housing out of reach for millions of Americans.

Across the country, medical debt forces legions of Americans to make painful sacrifices.

System for Unemployment Benefits Exposes Digital Divide By Andrew Kenney, Colorado Public Radio Published May 3, 2021 Lawmakers and President Trump have said they want the checks mailed by April 6. Still, because the Internal Revenue Service has reduced staff at all of its locations because of the coronavirus, many believe the checks may not go out until May. (Photo: iStockphoto / NNPA) As a social worker with the Denver Public Library, part of Sonia Falcon’s job is to help people in East Den...

Like dozens of other states, Colorado is turning to new technology to protect its unemployment system from scammers. The labor department recently enlisted a third-party platform, ID.me, to verify peoples identities – a process that requires users to scan their faces with a smartphones camera, upload photographs of their IDs and, in some cases, wait for hours for a live video interview. For Falcón and her client, its turned into a nightmare. Theyve spent weeks getting the teachers vital docu...

System for unemployment benefits exposes digital divide Follow Us Question of the Day       By ANDREW KENNEY - Associated Press - Sunday, May 2, 2021 DENVER (AP) - As a social worker with the Denver Public Library, part of Sonia Falcón’s job is to help people in East Denver use government services and benefits. But she’s never seen anything like the unemployment case that has consumed her work since Febr...

Collateral damage in a war against scammers Until the pandemic, it was simpler to get unemployment benefits in Colorado and elsewhere. State security systems generally asked people to fill out a form with their personal information — facts like their date of birth and their social security number — to prove who they were. That was easy enough for many people. But the last year has revealed that approach to be obsolete as scammers have used hordes of stolen identities to raid unemployment sy...