State Highlights: Conn. Advocacy Group Aims To Give Undocumented Access To Health Insurance; Insurer Underpaid California Hospitals For ER Services, Jury Rules

The CT Mirror: Group Pushes Health Insurance For Undocumented Residents
A Connecticut immigrant advocacy group on Thursday unveiled a measure that would allow residents without legal status to purchase private health insurance, a bill they say would be the first of its kind. ...Organizers for the youth-led statewide organization were joined by lawmakers and other local advocates at a press conference to outline the bill. (Silber, 2/14)

Modern Healthcare: Blue Shield Of Calif. 'Drastically' Underpaid For ER Services, Jury Says 
A federal jury decided Tuesday that insurer Blue Shield of California underpaid a California hospital system for emergency medical services provided to Blue Shield's members. The jury in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco determined that Blue Shield must pay out-of-network NorthBay Healthcare Group 67% of its billed charges since the end of 2016. King & Spalding, the law firm representing NorthBay, estimated that it would recover more than $16 million, but the exact amount has not yet been decided. (Livingston, 2/14)

The CT Mirror: A New Push For A Public Option In Connecticut
The ambitious co-chairs of the legislature’s Insurance and Real Estate Committee, Rep. Sean Scanlon of Guilford and Sen. Matt Lesser of Middletown, have been quietly working for months on how to nudge Connecticut into the ranks of blue states exploring a public option for health coverage. The first public glimpse of their work came Wednesday at an informational hearing featuring state and national advocates of returning the state to the forefront of health care reform, an issue at a stalemate in Washington since the election of a president committed to the repeal of Obamacare. (Pazniokas, 2/14)

The New York Times: Transgender Man Awarded $120,000 In Discrimination Case At Iowa Prison
In 2015, Jesse Vroegh, a registered nurse working in an Iowa prison, asked his employers at the state Department of Corrections to allow him to use the men’s restrooms and locker rooms at work because he was transitioning from female to male. But the department denied his requests, citing its concerns about the “rights of the male officers” and saying that transgender issues were “too controversial,” according to a lawsuit. (Hauser, 2/14)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Official Out After Family Planning, Cancer Screening Woes
A top Milwaukee Health Department staffer who oversaw the city's problem-plagued family planning and cancer screening programs has been ousted from the agency. [Tasha] Jenkins, who made about $94,000 per year, was responsible for Milwaukee's family planning and cancer screening programs, both of which struggled last year to provide key services to city residents. (Spicuzza, 2/14)

Chicago Tribune: Some Illinois Home Health Care Workers Get Just Eight Hours Of Training. Is That Enough?
By any measure, home health care is a booming industry that includes a range of workers, such as nurses, certified nursing assistants, aides who provide small amounts of medical care and workers who help with daily tasks of living. In Illinois, the number of home care workers – those providing only minimal medical care or no medical care at home — more than doubled, from 37,420 in 2005 to 81,160 in 2015, according to PHI. It’s the training of those nonmedical workers, who help with bathing, eating and dressing, that has drawn some concern. Illinois requires nonmedical workers employed by agencies to get eight hours of training a year. (Schencker, 2/14)

New Hampshire Public Radio: In Sununu's Budget Address, Health Spending Is Front And Center
One of the most expensive pieces of Sununu’s proposed budget is a $40 million investment to address two long-standing issues with the way the state handles mental health care. The first issue is a practice known as emergency room boarding. (Moon, 2/14)

The Associated Press: Youth Programs Left Wanting By California Marijuana Law
When California voters legalized marijuana, they were promised that part of the tax revenue from pot sales and cultivation would be devoted to programs to teach youth how to avoid substance abuse. But more than a year after the start of sales, there's no money for those programs and questions are looming about how they might operate in the future. (2/14)

Austin American-Statesman: Watchdog Agency Struggles With Sexual Harassment, Racism Complaints
The state agency charged with ferreting out misconduct at the Health and Human Services Commission has been dealing with misconduct within its own ranks. There were 12 civil rights complaint investigations at the Office of Inspector General in 2018 compared to one in 2017 and two in 2016. A high-ranking manager resigned in October after sexually harassing a female employee. A male employee was fired the next month after being accused of being hostile to the same female employee. (Ball, 2/14)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Nursing Home Closure Will Displace About 105 Residents, 160 Lose Jobs
Wellspring of Milwaukee, a nursing home and rehabilitation center in Milwaukee, is closing and has begun the process of transferring its roughly 105 residents to other nursing homes. The closing, which has been approved by the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, is tentatively set for April 12, according to a notice filed with the state Department of Workforce Development. (Boulton, 2/14)

Wyoming Public Radio: Wyoming Senate Rejects Attempt To Abolish The Death Penalty
An effort to abolish the death penalty in Wyoming has failed. The Senate voted 18 to12 to defeat a bill that would have changed Wyoming’s maximum punishment to life without parole. (Beck, 2/14)

CALmatters: Frustrated With The Slow Response Of Government, Californians Are Serving Their Homeless Neighbors Themselves
Sidewalk shantytowns are as iconic as palm trees in California these days. Though state and local governments are finally spending big on the homelessness, they’re not moving fast enough. That’s the case argued by a new generation of homeless advocates in California, despite billions of dollars earmarked to address homelessness by state and local governments. (Tinoco, 2/13)

MPR: New Corrections Commissioner: Should "Really Mentally Ill People Be In A Prison?"
[Martin] Horn said [Paul] Schnell is part of a trend in the field: More and more leaders are coming from backgrounds other than corrections — backgrounds like social work and law. But just because those leaders recognize the need to manage mental health issues doesn't make it easy to figure out what to do about them. (Roth, 2/15)

Georgia Health News: Clash Over CON Bill Turns Testy Under Gold Dome
The newly formed House committee on health care access heard from a stream of opponents and supporters of the overhaul of the current certificate of need (CON) apparatus. CON governs the construction and expansion of health care facilities and services. A provider currently must obtain a “certificate of need” to proceed with such a project. (Miller, 2/14)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: New Orleans Nonprofit Gets Funding To Expand In-School Vision Screenings 
Over the last decade, the Health and Education Alliance of Louisiana, also known as HEAL, has supported schools in New Orleans by providing vision and hearing screenings as well as mental health counseling and expertise in preventative health care for students in need. The program hopes to expand its reach in August. The bulk of HEAL’s work involves screenings to help schools identify students who may be struggling academically because they need a hearing aid or glasses. Up to this point, most of that work has been done in New Orleans and Tangipahoa Parish. (Nobles, 2/14)

The Associated Press: 100 Days After Paradise Burned, The Stories Of The Victims
On that frantic morning, TK Huff was calm. The 71-year-old amputee sat in his wheelchair, pointing a garden hose at what quickly became the deadliest wildfire in California history. Nobody knew at the time, early on Nov. 8, how bad it would be. When his family called at 7:15 a.m., Huff said he would leave. But he never made it out. All around, fires were breaking out, and men and women — most of them elderly, many of them disabled — were doomed: Flames soon overtook 74-year-old Richard Brown’s beloved log cabin in the Sierra Nevada foothills. On the edge of neighboring Paradise, a blaze prompted the Feather Canyon Retirement Community to evacuate its residents — all except 88-year-old Julian Binstock, overlooked in the chaos. (Gecker and Har, 2/15)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Georgia Officials Hope New Mental Health App Will Appeal To Youth
State health officials launched a new mobile app Thursday that offers free and confidential access to people suffering from mental illness, substance abuse and other issues. The My GCAL app, which works on Apple and Android phones, caters to younger Georgians who are more comfortable sending texts than picking up the phone. (Bluestein, 2/14)

The Oregonian: Douglas County Agrees To Cleaner Jail Cells, Better Medical Care, Access To Showers For Inmates 
Douglas County has agreed to adopt new policies to improve medical care of jail inmates, ensure cells are kept clean and prisoners have access to showers, clean clothes and feminine hygiene products, according to a court settlement. The county also agreed in the settlement to cover $25,000 in attorney costs for the plaintiff, Terri Carlisle, a Roseburg woman who had sued the county and its contracted jail medical provider, alleging mistreatment during her sixth-month stay in jail in 2015 on a conviction for driving under the influence of intoxicants. (Bernstein, 2/14)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Medical Marijuana Dispensaries Proposed In Georgia
Legislation filed Thursday would allow medical marijuana oil to be sold to patients in Georgia. The proposal calls for medical marijuana dispensaries to serve the state’s rising number of registered patients — more than 8,400 so far. The drug would be legally grown, manufactured, tested, tracked and distributed for the first time if House Bill 324 passes. (Niesse, 2/14)