State Highlights: Texas Struggles To Get Broadband To Rural Areas, A Key To Expanding Telemedicine Access; California Is Flush With Cash And Residents Want To Spend It On Health Care

Politico: Telemedicine Demand Spurs Rural Broadband Push In Texas
Texas Republicans don’t usually look to Lyndon Johnson for inspiration. But the need for improved broadband services in rural areas — to spread telemedicine, viewed as the next frontier of medicine — has caused some to look to the former president’s efforts to connect those same areas to the electrical grid. (Rayasam, 12/12)

San Francisco Chronicle: Californians Want State To Spend Surplus On Health Care For All, Free Community College
Californians are in a spending mood with the state flush with cash, and they’re putting a priority on creating a universal health care system and making community colleges free, a new poll indicates. They’re much less enthusiastic about two priorities of outgoing Gov. Jerry Brown — the troubled high-speed rail project and saving money for the day the economy turns bad, according to a poll released Wednesday night by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California. (Byrne, 12/12)

KQED: Poll: Californians Want Universal Health Coverage, Free Community College
In a new survey from the Public Policy Institute of California, 60 percent of adults said universal health coverage should be a high or very high priority.“ The election polls indicated that health care was a major concern for Californians," said Mark Baldassare, president of PPIC. "And that seems to be reflected here." (Orr, 12/12)

The Associated Press: Florida School Massacre Panel Recommends Arming Teachers
The panel investigating the Florida high school massacre recommended Wednesday that teachers who volunteer and undergo extensive background checks and training be allowed to carry concealed guns on campus to stop future shootings. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission voted 13-1 to recommend the Legislature allow the arming of teachers, saying it’s not enough to have one or two police officers or armed guards on campus. Florida law adopted after the Feb. 14 shooting that left 17 dead allows districts to arm non-teaching staff members such as principals, librarians and custodians — 13 of the 67 districts do, mostly in rural parts of the state. (Spencer and Anderson, 12/12)

Tampa Bay Times: Reps. Kathy Castor, Charlie Crist Repeat Call For Federal Investigation Into All Children’s Heart Unit
U.S. Reps. Kathy Castor and Charlie Crist doubled down on their request for a federal investigation into the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Heart Institute on Wednesday, a day after the hospital announced resignations by the CEO and other top executives. They had already released a statement calling for action after a Tampa Bay Times investigation found that the mortality rate at the hospital’s heart surgery unit had tripled from 2015 to 2017. (Bedi and McGrory, 12/12)

The Associated Press: No Psychiatric Hospital Employee Responsible For Escape
No single employee was directly responsible for the escape of a man from a Hawaii psychiatric hospital, a state investigation found, but questions remain about how he was able to walk out of the facility and fly to California, officials said Wednesday. The state attorney general's office completed an administrative investigation more than a year after Randall Saito escaped from Hawaii State Hospital. Officials on Wednesday released findings of the investigation, but they said a redacted report will be posted online later Wednesday or Thursday. (12/12)

The Baltimore Sun: Johns Hopkins School Of Nursing Wins Grant To Expand Aging-In-Place Program
The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing was given a $3 million grant to implement an aging-in-place program for seniors across the country. The five-year program aims to help lower-income adults improve function, lesson disability and age in their homes, which research has shown can be a cost saver and is paid for in some states by Medicare and Medicaid, health programs for the elderly and the poor. (Cohn, 12/12)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Senate Passes Bill Requiring Quarterly Checks Of SNAP, Medicaid Eligibility
The Ohio Senate passed a bill that would require the state to verify each quarter whether recipients of Medicaid and food aid are eligible for the benefits they receive. The state verifies eligibility just yearly right now. (Hancock, 12/12)

The Associated Press: Report Says Suicide Rates In Virginia Are Slowly Increasing
A new state report says that suicide rates in Virginia have been slowly increasing in the last two decades. A recently released report from the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services said suicides have increased since 1999 and there was a 5.4 percent increase from 2015 to 2016. Handguns were the most common cause of death in suicides, used in 58 percent of all cases in Virginia, the report said. (12/13)

North Carolina Health News: Advocates See Potential For Child Death Prevention In Connecting State Data
Any time a child dies it’s a tragedy, but in 2017, 1,313 children younger than 17 in North Carolina died. For each of those tragedies, local and state health officials, medical examiners and child health experts review the circumstances around each child’s death in an attempt to learn how to prevent the next child from dying. But too often, those reviews are not coordinated across counties, and lessons that could be learned from looking at child death data on a statewide level get lost in a system that’s become too disconnected. (Hoban, 12/11)

Philadelphia Inquirer: Pa. Officials Spent 8 Years Developing An Algorithm For Sentencing. Now, Lawmakers Want To Scrap It.
It is closing in on a decade since Pennsylvania legislators passed a law ordering the state Commission on Sentencing to develop a risk-assessment instrument — an algorithm that theoretically would make sentencing fairer, eliminate guesswork and judicial bias, and reduce incarceration. At hearings across the state this week on the commission’s latest proposal, reform advocates, people affected by the justice system, lawyers, and lawmakers called it racially biased and inaccurate. (Melamed, 12/12)

Houston Chronicle: Kingwood Resident Indicted In Connection With More Than $4M In Health Care Fraud 
A grand jury in Tulsa, Okla. indicted Kingwood resident and physician Jerry Keepers along with two other men in connection with an alleged conspiracy to commit $4.7 million in health care fraud. Keepers, named as a defendant in the indictment is charged with soliciting and receiving over $860,000 in illegal bribe and kickback payments from Tulsa residents Christopher Parks and Gary Lee, who is also a physician. (Contreras, 12/12)

The Baltimore Sun: Curbside Delivery: Mom Makes It To — But Not Inside — Howard County General Hospital To Have Her Baby 
Genet Sebani almost made it into the hospital in time to deliver her baby on Monday. Almost. Sebani planned to give birth at Howard County General Hospital in Columbia, but Monday she made it only to the driveway outside the front door. ...The hospital has a busy labor and delivery unit — more than 3,500 babies are born there every year. And staff have their choreography down for such emergencies. There’s even a special code for it. (Cohn, 12/12)

Philadelphia Inquirer: A Cannabis Futurist Foresees Dirt-Cheap Weed, THC Appetizers, And A Big Impact From Canada
It’s not a matter of if the United States will legalize cannabis, it’s simply a matter of when, says Jonathan Caulkins, with an air of inevitability. The important question the Carnegie Mellon University professor wants us to consider is this: What’s the best way of doing it on a national level that will have the fewest unintended and harmful consequences? (Wood, 12/12)