State Highlights: New York Lawmakers To Mull Pros, Cons Of Single-Payer Health Care; More States Adopt Expansive View Of Palliative Care

The Wall Street Journal: New York State Lawmakers Weigh Single-Payer Health Bill
State lawmakers heard hours of testimony for and against establishing a system of single-payer health care for New York during a Tuesday hearing in Albany as they weigh legislation on the topic. Groups representing hospitals worried that they would receive lower reimbursement rates that would prompt closures. Insurance companies warned that people would have to wait longer for specialist care. Mitch Katz, president of New York City Health & Hospitals, said a single-payer system would ensure health care as a human right. Public employee unions said they didn’t want to surrender health benefits won through contract talks. (Vielkind, 5/28)

Stateline: Palliative Care Beyond Hospice Is Spreading To More States
Now more states are taking steps to extend such coverage to millions more people. They are extending palliative care benefits to adult Medicaid beneficiaries who are not necessarily close to death, mandating that providers tell patients that palliative care is available when it might be of some benefit, and requiring palliative care training for doctors. Maryland in 2017 became the first state to require all hospitals with more than 50 beds to provide palliative care services. (Ollove, 5/29)

Los Angeles Times: The West Has Many Wildfires, But Too Few Prescribed Burns, Study Finds
President Trump has laid the blame for out-of-control California wildfires on the state’s “gross mismanagement” of its forests. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke pointed the finger at “environmental terrorist groups.” But according to a new study, the federal government is not doing enough to control the threat of wildfire in the West. (Phillips, 5/29)

California Healthline: UCSF Medical Center Backs Off Plan To Deepen Ties With Dignity Health
UCSF Medical Center officials said Tuesday they no longer would pursue a formal affiliation with Dignity Health, a large Catholic health care system that restricts care on the basis of religious doctrine. The decision follows months of heated protest from hundreds of University of California-San Francisco faculty and staffers, who argued that such an arrangement would compromise patient care and threaten the famously progressive health system’s reputation as a provider of unbiased and evidence-based care. (Gold, 5/28)

San Francisco Chronicle: Following Outcry, UCSF Ends Talks To Expand Partnership With Dignity Health
UCSF has abruptly ended three years of negotiations with Dignity Health, halting plans to share branding and medical services with the Catholic hospital chain while calming critics of Dignity’s religious restrictions on care. (Asimov, 5/28)

New Hampshire Public Radio: Teens Weigh In On Lawmakers' Plans To Tackle Vaping
Students and administrators say e-cigarettes are becoming more popular and harder to control in New Hampshire. E-cigarettes - which look like flash drives or pens - produce a flavored vapor high in nicotine. Manufacturers say they help adults quit smoking, but with flavors like cotton candy and lagging regulations on products, many say vaping has become an epidemic among teens. (Gibson, 5/28)

The Baltimore Sun: Frank Kelly Helped Create UMMS, And His Insurance Business Grew Alongside It. Now Such Ties Are Under Scrutiny. 
Since its inception more than three decades ago, the University of Maryland Medical System has been molded by former state Sen. Francis “Frank” Kelly Jr. Hard-charging and sometimes brusque, Kelly used his seat in the state legislature in the mid-1980s to help create UMMS and build its world-renowned R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. ...Those efforts have long bolstered Kelly’s reputation as a civic-minded businessman. But in the past few months, they’ve also drawn scrutiny after revelations that Kelly and nine others on UMMS’ 30-member board had contracts with the system they oversaw. UMMS has acknowledged that some of those contracts were not competitively bid, though it has not said whether Kelly’s were. (Rector and Cohn, 5/29)

The CT Mirror: Lamont, Hospitals On Brink Of Resolving Seven-Year Feud
Gov. Ned Lamont and the Connecticut Hospital Association announced the settlement of a 2015 industry lawsuit contesting a provider tax that has extracted billions of dollars from facilities since 2011. The administration also confirmed last week that it has begun supplemental payments to hospitals to resolve a $200 million-plus dispute involving payments for treatment of Medicaid patients. (Phaneuf, 5/28)

The CT Mirror: After Years Of Lean Budgets, Nonprofits Want $100 M From Surplus
With Connecticut’s coffers flush with cash for the first time in a decade, long-suffering nonprofit social services want a share of the wealth. The CT Community Nonprofit Alliance recently wrote to Gov. Ned Lamont, asking that he and lawmakers set aside $100 million to assist those who provide the bulk of state-sponsored social services. (Phaneuf, 5/29)

Texas Tribune: Texas Law Will Prevent Minors From Buying OTC Cough Medicine
Starting in September, Texans under 18 years old will no longer be able to buy popular over-the-counter cough medicines like NyQuil and Robitussin under a bill Gov. Greg Abbott signed earlier this month. House Bill 1518, by state Rep. Garnet Coleman D-Houston, will prevent minors from buying products that contain dextromethorphan, a cough suppressant found in more than 100 over-the-counter cough medicines. (Byrne, 5/29)

KQED: ‘We Have No Choice’: San Diego Officials Coping With Influx Of Migrants, Flu Outbreak
In a migrant shelter inside a former courthouse in downtown San Diego, medical personnel from local health clinics navigated through rows of green cots, stopping to check the temperatures and blood pressure of migrant parents and their children. Down the hall, physicians from the county and UC San Diego conducted initial health screenings for new arrivals. (Hall, 5/28)

Tampa Bay Times: Profit At Johns Hopkins Hospitals Tumbled. All Children’s Was To Blame.
The Johns Hopkins Health System’s operating profit dropped 70 percent in the first quarter of 2019, in large part because of problems in the All Children’s Hospital heart surgery program, according to the system’s latest financial report. The health system’s operating profit margin fell by a total of $31.7 million compared to the same period last year. The disclosure said the decrease was “mainly driven by lower net patient service revenue at (All Children’s) as a result of the closing of the Heart Institute.” (McGrory and Bedi, 5/28)

MPR: 'Mental Health Is Health': Docs Who Treat Kids Get Trained To Spot Mental Health Problems
In Minnesota, more than a million people are under the age of 18, but there are only 140 child psychiatrists practicing in the state. And there's clearly a need. There's a 1 in 5 chance that kids will develop depression sometime between middle and high school and a 1 in 6 chance they'll develop serious anxiety.Yet the people who take care of kids most of the time — like pediatricians and family doctors — don't get much training in how to treat mental health problems. (Roth, 5/29)

San Francisco Chronicle: No Hallucination: Oakland A Step Closer To Approving Use Of ’Shrooms
The Oakland City Council’s public safety committee approved a resolution Tuesday to decriminalize certain natural psychedelics, including mushrooms, paving the way for Oakland to become the second city in the country to do so. The resolution, introduced by committee chairman Noel Gallo, instructs law enforcement to stop investigating and prosecuting people using the drugs. (Ravani, 5/28)

Sacramento Bee: Oakland May Decriminalize Mushrooms: Drug, Legalization Facts
Oakland leaders are meeting on Tuesday night to consider decriminalizing so-called “magic mushrooms.” That would make the Northern California city the second in the United States to allow adults over 21 to possess psilocybin, the ingredient that gives “magic mushrooms” their hallucinogenic effects. (Gilmour, 5/28)

Concord Monitor: Senate Finance Committee Approves Psych Facility Compromise
New Hampshire’s Senate Finance Committee is backing a plan to create a psychiatric facility in the state, breathing new life into a proposal by Gov. Chris Sununu months after the House stripped it from the budget. But the plan, recommended 4-2, scales back Sununu’s original vision for a standalone psychiatric hospital, reducing the bed count from 60 to 24 and the price tag from $26 million to $17 million. (DeWitt, 5/28)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Cleveland Pimp Sues Over Cuyahoga County Jail Conditions
A Cleveland man convicted of human trafficking said in a lawsuit that he endured inhumane living conditions while being housed in the Cuyahoga County Jail. Dorian Brown, 30, said he also endured cruel and unusual punishment and was deprived of proper medical and mental health care when in the jail from 2015 to 2017. (Heisig, 5/28)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Settlement Finalized In Terrill Thomas Jail Dehydration Case
Milwaukee County and the company that formerly provided health care at the jail have paid $6.75 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the estate of Terrill Thomas, who died of dehydration in his cell in 2016. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel first reported the proposed settlement in January. The payments, about $5 million from the county and $1.7 million from Armor Correctional Health Services, have now been made. (Vielmetti, 5/28)

California Healthline: Lawmakers Push To Stop Surprise ER Billing
California has some of the nation’s strongest protections against surprise medical bills. But many Californians still get slammed with huge out-of-network charges.State lawmakers are now trying to close gaps in the law with a bill that would limit how much hospitals outside of a patient’s insurance network can charge for emergency care. “We thought the practice of balance billing had been addressed,” said state Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), author of the bill. “Turns out there are major holes in the law potentially impacting millions of Californians with different types of insurance.” (Ibarra, 5/28)

Arizona Republic: Arizona Supreme Court: Medical Marijuana Extracts Are Legal
The long debate over whether medical marijuana extracts are legal in Arizona is over, after a ruling by the state Supreme Court. Extracts fall under the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act, the court ruled Tuesday. The ruling comes after a 2016 conviction and sentencing of Rodney Jones, a registered medical marijuana patient who was found in possession of a jar containing 0.005 ounces of hashish in 2013. (Castle, 5/28)