Iowa Shifts Mental Health Care Funding To State In Tax Rearrangement

Des Moines Register: Iowa Senate Passes Bill Cutting Taxes, Shifting Mental Health Care Funding To The State
Iowa lawmakers have reached a deal on a sweeping plan to move funding for mental health services from county property taxes to the state while cutting income taxes, ending Iowa's inheritance tax and boosting a range of tax credits for affordable housing and child care. The Iowa Senate passed the bill Monday on a vote of 29-15 with every Republican and Sens. Kevin Kinney, D-Oxford, and Tony Bisignano, D-Des Moines, voting yes and every other Democrat voting no. The measure now goes to the House, which is expected to pass it and send it to Gov. Kim Reynolds' desk. (Gruber-Miller, 5/17)

North Carolina Health News: Lawmakers Seek Non-Police Mental Health Interventions 
When it comes to dealing with people who have mental illness, most people think hospitalization is good and jail is bad, but according to Cherene Allen-Caraco “both of them are indicators of system failures.” Allen-Caraco has served people with mental illness through Promise Resource Network, a provider of mental health services in Charlotte for 16 years. Of the thousands of people she and her team have served, they’ve only involuntarily committed one person to a psychiatric hospital. (Knopf, 5/18)

AP: West Virginia To Get $2.4M For Cancer Prevention Programs
West Virginia is set to receive $2.4 million in federal funds for cancer prevention programs. The state’s U.S. senators announced the funding from the Department of Health and Human Services on Monday. The money will flow to cancer control programs in the state health department. (5/18)

Crain's New York Business: N.Y. Bill Limiting Mandatory Mail-Order Pharmacy Services For Specialty Drugs Advances Assembly
A New York Assembly bill that would potentially prevent patients from being forced to use mail-order services for specialty drug prescriptions—legislation that has been introduced before—made headway last week. Although independent pharmacists lauded the development, pharmacy benefit managers said the bill not only would increase costs for employers and patients but also compromise patient safety. The bill seeks to amend a 2011 law that pharmacy benefit managers cannot make it mandatory for patients with prescriptions for "specialty drugs" to obtain them only through mail-order from "specialty pharmacies." The bill also removes a requirement for independent pharmacies to meet certain terms and conditions before they can dispense such drugs. Additionally, it further defined what a mail-order pharmacy is and included exemptions for collective-bargaining agreements. (Sim, 5/17)

Capitol Beat News Service: Worker Advocates Call For Broader Paid Family Leave 
Worker advocates in Georgia are pushing for further expansion of paid family leave after state lawmakers passed legislation to give state employees up to three weeks of time off following the birth of a child. Representatives from several Georgia nonprofits met Friday to call for a broader paid family and medical leave program that offers up to 12 weeks of leave for new parents, sick leave for surgery or serious medical treatment and extending eligibility to care for a family member beyond one’s child. (Evans, 5/16)

Bangor Daily News: Safety Concerns Headline Debate Over Expanding Maine's Food Sovereignty Laws
Supporters of legislation to amend Maine’s food sovereignty act say the new language will make the state’s local food economy stronger by increasing opportunities for unlicensed home-based food businesses, but not everyone is on board with the change. Opponents, who include Maine food industry and farming groups, feel the amendment will unnecessarily weaken regulations aimed at keeping unsafe food from finding its way into consumers hands. (Bayly, 5/18)

AP: Dozens More Men Sue Ohio State Over Doc's Sexual Misconduct
Dozens more men are suing Ohio State over the university’s failure to stop sexual abuse and misconduct decades ago by team doctor Richard Strauss. They echo claims filed previously by over 400 men, many of whom allege they were groped during required medical exams or while seeking treatment for unrelated ailments. New claims from at least 41 plaintiffs were filed in two federal lawsuits on Friday and one on Monday, which marked two years since a report from a law firm investigation concluded university employees were aware of concerns about Strauss as early as 1979 but didn’t stop him. (Franko, 5/18)

USA Today: Texas Senate Tries Again To Ban Gender-Affirming Care For Transgender Youths
The Texas Senate, thwarted in two previous efforts directed at young transgender Texans, took a third bite of the apple Monday by giving initial passage, on a party-line vote, to a Republican bill that would ban gender-affirming medical care for those under age 18. Senate Bill 1311 would prohibit doctors from offering a range of treatments to youths, including puberty blockers — reversible medications commonly prescribed to delay the onset of physical changes — providing teenagers time to decide if more permanent changes are desired. (Lindell, 5/17)

NBC News: States Are Turning Away Unemployment Aid. Workers Fear Choice Between Health And A Paycheck.
For Kelvin Wade, 34, the pandemic is far from over. He recently marked the anniversary of his mother's death from Covid-19, a loss that still feels fresh. He and his wife, D'Anna, 23, who live in Ridgeland, Mississippi, fear for the safety of their 15-month-old daughter, so Wade goes out on errands alone, hoping to reduce the family's exposure. The couple is hesitant to get vaccinated, worried that the shots could bring additional risks. And more than a year after the coronavirus first began shuttering businesses and displacing people from their jobs, both are still out of work. (Harris and Silva, 5/18)

In news about homelessness —

San Francisco Chronicle: One Of San Francisco's Last Big Homeless Camps Has Been Taken Down
By 9 a.m. Monday, the front-end loaders and dump trucks were lined up outside the abandoned state-owned parking lot under Highway 101 in SoMa. A few weary residents who lived there in tents, trucks and a half-built tiny home dragged their belongings onto a nearby sidewalk as social workers and California Highway Patrol officers made their final rounds. Overhead, traffic thundered as San Francisco continued to reawaken from a year in pandemic-induced limbo. Slowly, the tents and tarps and other makeshift structures started to come down. (Hepler, 5/17)

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Finally Has A New Mental Health Team To Respond To Homeless People In Distress. Is It Helping?
The teams, which will be fully initiated this summer, have been hailed as a compassionate way to coax the city’s most vulnerable into care. Mayor London Breed has also touted them as a key element in her road map for police reform, which she introduced last year amid the national protests over police brutality. The goal is to reduce what supporters say is the city’s over-reliance on police, particularly during sensitive situations that require a trained mental health professional. (Thadani and Cassidy, 5/17)

CIDRAP: Comorbidities, Racial Disparity Found In Homeless Hospital COVID Patients
Almost two thirds of homeless patients hospitalized for COVID-19 were of non-White descent and more than 80% had at least one comorbidity, according to a descriptive study in The Journal of Infectious Diseases yesterday. (5/17)

Salt Lake Tribune: Utah Audit Finds Drugs Still Present In New Homeless Resource Centers
The lawlessness that once pervaded The Road Home’s now-shuttered downtown emergency shelter isn’t as rampant in the Salt Lake City area’s three new homeless resource centers. But drug use and crime persist as a problem within the facilities, state auditors have concluded. When auditors visited the men’s resource center in South Salt Lake, accompanying police officers noticed the smell of spice, a synthetic drug, before they’d even walked through its doors. Inside, auditors watched as a man slumped over in a stupor after smoking spice and noticed another resident furtively discard drug paraphernalia after he spotted the incoming officers, according to the legislative report released Monday. (Rodgers and Stevens, 5/17)