State Highlights: Calif. Governor Considers Medicaid For Immigrants; Iowa Kids’ Mental Health

Los Angeles Times: Gov. Jerry Brown Considering Expanding Medi-Cal To Immigrants
Gov. Jerry Brown is considering expanding state-funded Medi-Cal coverage to residents shielded from deportation under President Obama’s new immigration policies. Nancy McFadden, the governor’s top policy aide, said that possibility is under review by the Brown administration, but implied that the potential cost would be a factor in the decision. (Willon, 12/3)

The Des Moines Register: Mentally Ill Kids Need State Help, Families Say
Mothers of children with mental illnesses gathered at the Capitol on Wednesday to urge the state to get serious about helping them. "If any other childhood disease killed at the rate of mental illness, people would demand the government intervene," said Tammy Nyden of Iowa City. "Do we not care about these children because their disorders happen to be of the brain, and not of the kidney or the heart? Really?" Nyden's 12-year-old son, Cole, has a range of mental disorders and has spent more than two years on a waiting list for services under a special state program. (Leys, 12/3)

California Healthline: Rural Frail, Elderly Beneficiaries Being Shifted To Medicaid Managed Care Plans
This week, state health officials launched a new phase in the rural expansion of Medi-Cal managed care, moving about 24,000 medically complicated seniors and the disabled into managed care plans. (Gorn, 12/3)

Los Angeles Times: Truvada, A Pill To Fight HIV, Stirs Controversy Among Gays
It would have seemed the stuff of fantasy in the dark days of the 1980s, when an AIDS diagnosis was tantamount to a death sentence: a pill, taken daily, that could protect against HIV infection. But today, such a drug exists. The blue tablet, marketed as Truvada, has been available to people at risk of being exposed to HIV since 2012. ... It could have a dramatic effect in Los Angeles County, where about 47,000 people are known to live with HIV. Contracting the virus is no longer a death sentence because of a cocktail of drugs that suppress it, but the county still reports more than 1,000 new HIV infections each year. (Brown and Flores, 12/3)

The Kansas Health Institute News Service: Kansas Inpatient Mental Illness Hospital To Not Take New Patients
The Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services has suspended voluntary admissions to Osawatomie State Hospital, one of the state’s two inpatient facilities for people with serious mental illnesses. The decision, according to a memo sent to the state’s 26 community mental health centers late Tuesday afternoon, was driven by “ongoing and critical census challenges” at the state hospital. The memo also outlined procedures for handling patients who are involuntary admitted. In recent months, the 206-bed hospital has admitted record and near-record numbers of patients, causing dozens of patients to be triple-bunked in rooms meant for two. (Ranney, 12/3)

North Carolina Health News: Lawmakers Look To Support People With Traumatic Brain Injury
After several months of hearing testimony from providers and family members of people with traumatic brain injuries, North Carolina is recommending that lawmakers appropriate $2.2 million in recurring state dollars that would cover a wide array of services to Medicaid recipients with TBI. That money would also trigger federal dollars that match state dollars at a rate of two to one, meaning there could be as much as $6.6 million in services for TBI patients under a proposed Medicaid waiver. (Hoban, 12/4)

The Washington Post: Va. Health Board To Vote On Advancing Review Of Abortion Clinic Rules
Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) on Wednesday appointed a former lawmaker and abortion rights advocate to the Board of Health in time for a vote Thursday on whether the commonwealth will begin to overhaul regulations of abortion providers. (Portnoy, 12/3)

Kaiser Health News: In New York, Video Chat Trumps Quarantine To Combat TB
Thirty-four-year-old Karim works long days as an investment adviser, and when he doesn’t burn the midnight oil, he plays basketball or goes to the gym, hangs out with friends, or heads to coffee shops. You wouldn’t know he has an especially tough-to-treat illness. “I have multiple-drug-resistant tuberculosis,” he explains. It’s called that, because at least two of the most potent drugs conventionally used to squelch the tuberculosis bacterium don’t work on the strain of the illness that Karim has. So he needs to take a combination of drugs, with harsher side effects, for 18 months. That’s two to three times longer than the traditional treatment for tuberculosis. (Mogul, 12/3)