State Highlights: Alarming Rise In Minnesota Suicide Rates Sparks Call For Action; Health Care Giant Kaiser Permanente Dinged By Federal Labor Regulators

The Star Tribune: Continued Rise In Minn. Suicides Prompts Plea For Better Prevention 
Suicides rose in Minnesota in 2017 with an alarming increase in men taking their own lives, but fewer suicides among women. Those findings were released Monday by the Minnesota Department of Health, along with a plea from the state health commissioner to halt a decadeslong trend of rising suicide numbers by increasing public awareness, mental health treatment and prevention programs. (Olson, 12/17)

Sacramento Bee: Kaiser Permanente Accused Of Not Negotiating Contracts
Health care giant Kaiser Permanente has been dinged by federal labor regulators, the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions announced Monday. But Kaiser disputes the conclusion reached by the Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, representing 85,000 employees, including some 1,300 in Fresno, who are seeking a new contract. The coalition also represents more than 2,000 workers based at Kaiser South Sacramento. (Amaro, 12/17)

Dallas Morning News: 27 Dallas-Fort Worth Hospitals Earn A Grades In New Patient Safety Ranking
The Leapfrog Group, a national nonprofit that works to improve health care quality, says Texas took a big jump up in its fall hospital safety grades ranking. Texas moved from 14th nationally to fifth on the strength of a 20 percent increase in hospitals earning A grades. The grading system uses 28 measures of publicly available data and assigns A-F letter grades based on hospitals' ability to protect patients from errors, injuries, accidents and infections. Here is how hospitals in the 19-county North Texas region fared. (O'Donnell and Joseph, 12/17)

The New York Times: Cuomo Moves To Legalize Recreational Marijuana In New York Within Months
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced that he would push to legalize recreational marijuana next year, a move that could generate more than $1.7 billion in sales annually and put New York in line with several neighboring states. The highly anticipated proposal came in a speech in Manhattan on Monday, in which the governor outlined his agenda for the first 100 days of his third term. Mr. Cuomo framed the speech as a reflection on what Franklin Delano Roosevelt — the former president who was once a New York governor himself — would do today, mixing sweeping rhetoric about American ideals with grim warnings about the Trump administration. (Wang, 12/17)

San Francisco Chronicle: Report: Berkeley Hospital Closure Would Mean Longer ER Waits, Ambulance Rides
The planned closure of Berkeley’s Alta Bates Summit Medical Center would severely restrict health care access for poor, elderly and minority East Bay residents, increase wait times for emergency care, and result in a loss of jobs, according to a new report by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Urban and Regional Development. Sutter Health, which owns Alta Bates, said in 2015 it would close the 347-bed hospital on Ashby Avenue by 2030, the year that California hospitals must comply with new seismic retrofitting standards or be decommissioned. (Ho, 12/17)

Chicago Tribune: 'I Was Given A Gift:' United Airlines CEO Recalls Heart Transplant 
United Airlines CEO Oscar Munoz had just finished working out at home when his knees buckled. He remembers thinking, “That was weird.” But he recalled the words of a doctor friend who had warned him not to ignore seemingly odd symptoms that could indicate heart problems. ...Munoz runs one of the world’s largest airlines. But on Monday, the 59-year-old wasn’t at United’s Chicago headquarters or on a plane. He was sitting alongside others who had also undergone heart transplants at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. They gathered as Northwestern doctors announced that this year they’ve broken the record for performing the most heart transplants ever at an Illinois hospital in one year. (Schencker, 12/17)

Los Angeles Times: State Utility Regulators Delayed Implementing Law Aimed At Preventing Wildfires
Long before the Camp fire raced through Northern California, claiming at least 86 lives and all but erasing the Gold Rush town of Paradise, state law required the three big power monopolies to file detailed strategies to prevent wildfires. Under Senate Bill 1028, San Diego Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric were supposed to prepare annual wildfire mitigation plans for reducing fire threats and identify who specifically would be responsible for implementing them. (McDonald, 12/17)

Modern Healthcare: When Tax Forms Don't Tell The Whole Story Of Community Benefits
Her inhaler was always nearby in case she had an asthma attack, resting by her pillow every night. Asthma was holding the fifth-grader back in school, putting her aspirations to be a writer and an artist further out of reach. Multiple visits to the emergency room took her away from schoolwork. She embodied a statistic compiled by Sinai Health System's Urban Health Institute: Nearly 1 in 4 kids in Chicago's West Side community of North Lawndale suffers from the chronic respiratory disease. (Kacik, 12/15)

The Star Tribune: UnitedHealth Group Will Pay $500M Less For Colorado-Based Physicians Group
In hopes of winning regulatory approval for a deal first announced last year, the parent company of DaVita Medical Group has agreed to lower by more than $500 million the sale price of its clinic business to UnitedHealth Group, according to a Monday regulatory filing. The filing from Colorado-based DaVita Inc. with the Securities and Exchange Commission also cites "underlying business performance" in explaining why the purchase price has been lowered from $4.9 billion to $4.34 billion. (Snowbeck, 12/17)

The CT Mirror: Public Vs. Private Social Services Debate Reaches The Lamont Transition
Advocates for public- and private-sector social services workers offered competing recommendations on how to finance and deliver state-sponsored human services amidst lean budget conditions. During a presentation at the state Veterans’ Home and Hospital in Rocky Hill, the leader of one of the largest, private, nonprofit agencies in Connecticut called for redeploying resources to the private sector in the coming years as state workers retire. (Phaneuf, 12/17)

The CT Mirror: Connecticut Faces Long Crawl Out Of Wealth Extremes, Crushing Debt
While economists and politicians differ over how to address the problem, those on all sides of the inequality debate generally agree there is an economic tipping point: when disparities become too extreme and too many are struggling. When adequate investment in human capital — higher education, adequate health care and decent housing — are impossible because of debt or under-employment, inequality becomes a significant drag on economic growth. (Phaneuf and Silber, 12/18)

The New York Times: Nebraska Petition Seeks Medical Marijuana Ballot Measure In 2020
As more and more surrounding states have legalized some form of medical marijuana, advocates in Nebraska say it’s time for their state to accept the reality and embrace the medicinal use of cannabis. And they want it written into the State Constitution. Two lawmakers started a petition drive last week hoping to build on legalization efforts elsewhere, including other deep red bastions like Utah and North Dakota, and put a Constitutional Amendment on medical marijuana on the state ballot in 2020. (Stack, 12/17)

Los Angeles Times: Police Investigate 'Reprehensible' Behavior Of Camp Fire Cleanup Workers Who Posted Offensive Photos 
One photo from the wreckage of the Camp fire’s devastating march through Paradise, Calif., shows the remains of a charred cat with a glass bottle sticking out of its mouth. In another, two workers pretend to go on a drive to “unknown destinations” in someone’s burned-out recreational vehicle. Some of the captions, including one that accompanied a photo of a man mimicking jumping on what’s left of a scorched trampoline in someone’s yard, included jokes: “Trampolines are stupid. BTW, it used to be called a Jumpoline until your mom got on it.” (Fry, 12/17)

Kansas City Star: NC Woman Pleads Guilty In Nationwide Adoption Scam
Prosecutors say the North Carolina woman posted on adoption websites and social media looking for people who are trying to adopt a baby, according to WECT. She had victims around the country send her money to cover food, housing and doctor appointments, the station reports. But she wasn’t actually pregnant. (Duncan, 12/17)