State Highlights: Calif. Immigrant Health Bill Clears Key Fiscal Panel; Ala. House OKs Measure To Create Medicaid Long-Term Care Networks

Los Angeles Times: Scaled-Back Immigrant Healthcare Bill Clears Key Fiscal Panel
A sweeping measure to offer state-subsidized healthcare coverage to people in the country illegally was significantly pared back Thursday in an effort to rein in costs as it cleared a key legislative hurdle. Rather than extend Medi-Cal--California's healthcare coverage for the poor--to all eligible adults regardless of immigration status, as originally proposed, the amended bill by state Sen. Ricardo Lara would set up a limited enrollment healthcare program. (Mason, 5/28)

The Associated Press: Alabama House Passes Bill To Create Long-term Care Networks
The Alabama House on Thursday passed a bill that would establish integrated care networks to allow more Medicaid recipients to stay in their homes instead of nursing homes. Senate Majority Leader Greg Reed, R-Jasper, said the legislation could cut Medicaid costs by $1.5 billion from 2018 to 2028 while also allowing more Medicaid recipients to receive home-based care. (Swant, 5/28)

Times Union: Therapists Say Rate Cut Would Hurt Kids
A proposed rate cut for physical, occupational and speech therapy in the Medicaid program is being decried by providers who warn that it could particularly affect children who need care [In Texas]. The $209.4 billion state budget proposed for the next two years includes a cut of about $350 million in state and federal funds for the therapy program serving children and elderly Texans. (Fikac, 5/28)

Columbus Dispatch: Medicaid Cuts Could Put Ohio Babies At Risk, Advocates Say
Health-care advocates say a state plan to scale back Medicaid coverage for low-income pregnant women will push Ohio’s already dismal rate of infants dying before their first birthday even higher. “If this budget does not change, our state legislature is in the process of enacting legislation that will increase the number of babies that die on the South Side. It is absolutely obscene,” said the Rev. John Edgar of the United Methodist Community Development for All People on Parsons Avenue. (Candisky, 5/29)

Politico: Welcome To The Red State HIV Epidemic
It t wasn’t supposed to happen here. Not in Austin, a one-doctor-and-an-ice-cream-shop town of 4,200 in southeastern Indiana, nestled off Interstate 65 on the road from Indianapolis to Louisville, where dusty storefronts sit vacant and many residents, lacking cars, walk to the local market. Not in rural, impoverished Scott County, which had reported fewer than five new cases of HIV infection each year, and just three cases in the past six years. Not in a state where, of the 500 new cases reported annually, only 3 percent are linked to injection drug use. But it did. And it could happen in many more backwoods towns just as unprepared as Austin. (Wren, 5/28)

North Carolina Heath News: Eugenics Compensation Amendment Continues To Leave Some Victims Out
An amendment to the House budget would speed compensation to eugenics victims. Nonetheless, some victims have been left out in the cold. According to the North Carolina Department of Administration, which is processing claims from people who were sterilized, close to 800 claims were filed, but only 220 were found to be “qualified” to receive compensation from the fund. (Hoban, 5/29)

The Associated Press: US Alleges Pain Clinics Operated As ‘Pill Mills’
The U.S. Attorney’s Office said Thursday that the indictments were returned on May 20 and unsealed Wednesday. They allege that the owners, operators and other associated with four clinics plotted to distribute oxycodone. The indictments name four pain clinics: PG Wellness Center of Oxon Hill, Maryland; A Plus Pain Clinic of Washington; First Priority Health Care of Elkridge, Maryland; and MPC Wellness Center of Greenbelt, Maryland. (5/28)

Health News Florida: Florida Getting First Breast Milk Bank
Baby Serenity lay on her tummy in a tiny white crib at Winnie Palmer Hospital for Women & Babies’ neonatal intensive care unit in Orlando. A nurse rubs her back as her chest heaves up and down with her little breaths. When Serenity was born three months early, in February, she weighed just one pound. Like many preemies, Serenity is dealing with a chronic lung disease and a heart condition. She’s also at high risk of necrotizing enterocolitis, a life threatening disease of the intestines. Doctors said breast milk could help build her immune system and fight infection. But Jenkins – like many mothers of premature babies -- said she couldn’t produce her own milk. Some moms can’t supply their own breast milk because they themselves are ill, stressed or on medications. (Chavez, 5/28)

The Kansas City Star: As Vaping Culture Gets Hot, Some Drop Cigarettes, But Maybe Not All the Risks
Like many a hardcore smoker, Candi McCann found it a bear to quit. Nothing worked. Not the patch. Not those blue smoking cessation pills her doctor prescribed. Then she tried those electronic cigarettes that produce a steamy vapor instead of smoke. Click, just like that, she went from more than a pack of smokes a day to becoming the Kansas City area's leading vaping evangelist. “I'm not going to tell you this is healthy,” said McCann. “But I can tell you that it is 99 percent better for you than smoking.” Whether that stat is true or not, that's one selling point that keeps customers coming back to the more than three dozen vape shops that have set up in the metro area since 2013. Before, there were few or none. (Hendricks, 5/28)