State Highlights: Blue Shield Of Calif. Spent $1.25B On Care 1st Deal; States Expand Access To Opioid Rescue Drug

Los Angeles Times: Blue Shield Spends $1.25 Billion On Care1st Deal, Records Show
Nonprofit insurer Blue Shield of California is spending $1.25 billion on its acquisition of Monterey Park health plan Care1st, records show. Blue Shield had refused to disclose the purchase price when it announced the deal in December and then sought confidentiality from state regulators in late January. The California Department of Managed Health Care turned over Blue Shield's filings late Monday in response to a public-records request from The Times. (Terhune, 3/24)

USA Today: Amid Crisis, States Expand Access To Opioid Rescue Drug
With drug overdoses skyrocketing across the USA, a growing number of states are expanding access to a fast-acting rescue drug called naloxone, which can revive a dying addict in minutes. But while these new laws have broad support in the public health community, some doctors and drug-treatment professionals say they are just Band-Aids for an overwhelming addiction problem requiring a much broader solution. (Ungar, 3/24)

ProPublica: California To Insurers: Don't Use Workers' Comp Law To Deny Approved Care
California labor officials have issued a warning to insurance companies that a new workers’ compensation law shouldn’t be used to reopen old cases and deny previously approved home health care to injured workers. The notice follows a ProPublica and NPR investigation earlier this month that featured a worker paralyzed in an on-the-job accident whose home health aide was abruptly taken away by his company’s insurer, leaving him to sit in his own waste for hours at a time. (Grabell, 3/24)

The Wall Street Journal: Ohio Governor John Kasich Weighs Jumping Into 2016 Fray
Mr. Kasich is known as a social conservative and fiscal hawk. He has been traveling the country to urge state legislatures to pass a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, and in his first term he promoted an effort to limit the bargaining powers of public-sector unions, which failed. Those stances put him in step with the party base. But his record also has policy land mines that could blow up in a Republican primary. Mr. Kasich engineered the expansion of Medicaid in Ohio under the 2010 health-care law; he has supported the national education standards known as Common Core; and he has said he is willing to consider offering a pathway to citizenship for people in the U.S. illegally. (Hook, 3/24)

The Texas Tribune: House Committee Considers E-cigarette Ban For Minors
A week after the Texas Senate passed a bill to prevent minors from buying electronic cigarettes, House lawmakers on Tuesday considered similar legislation they say would protect young Texans from addictive nicotine products. The House Public Health Committee took up five bills that would extend current restrictions on tobacco products to vapor products like e-cigarettes. Texas retailers are banned from selling cigarettes and other tobacco products to customers younger than 18, but sales of e-cigarettes to minors are allowed. (McCrimmon, 3/24)

Minnesota Public Radio: First Clinic Run By Nurses To Open In Minneapolis
After years of fighting for the authority to practice independently, some of Minnesota's highly skilled nurses will soon lead their own primary care clinic. (Benson, 3/24)

Connecticut Mirror: With Protest, Legislators Move Forward Governor’s Human Services Budget Cuts
Rather than vote the bill out of committee through the usual process, members voted simply to refer the measure to the Appropriations Committee. Majority Democrats on the committee said it was important to move the bill forward as part of the budget process, despite their disagreements with its substance, and some said voting to simply to refer it to another committee was a form of protest. But Republicans said that wasn’t enough of a protest, and that committee members owed it to their constituents to vote on the substance of the bill. Cuts in the bill include: Reducing Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women and parents of minor children, which is expected to cut about 34,200 people from the program. Reducing Medicaid payment rates for pharmacies. Freezing admission to a state-funded program for seniors that serves those who don’t require nursing home-level care but are at risk of hospitalization or short-term placement in a nursing home if they don't receive care at home. (Levin Becker, 3/24)

The Associated Press: Multistate Investigation Announced Into Premera Cyberattack
Washington state’s insurance commissioner announced Tuesday a multistate investigation into this winter’s cyberattack on Premera Blue Cross. Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler said he plans to work with his counterparts in Alaska and Oregon to look into operations at Premera, which is based in Mountlake Terrace. The investigation will explore the cyberattack disclosed by Premera last week, in which hackers accessed the personal information of 11 million consumers, including 6 million in Washington, between last May and the exploit’s Jan. 29 discovery. (Nunnally, 3/24)

North Carolina Health News: Vaccine Exemption Bill Draws Objections
In the wake of legislators filing a new bill that would all but remove religious exemptions from childhood vaccinations for schoolchildren, several dozen opponents of vaccine mandates descended on Jones Street Tuesday to protest the measure. (Hoban, 3/25)