State Highlights: Colorado Settles Lawsuit Over Providing Prisoners Expensive Hep C Drugs; Past Criminal Records Block Crime Victims From Claiming Compensation In 7 States

Stat: Colorado Inmates Reach A Deal For Access To Hepatitis C Drugs 
After more than a year of bickering, Colorado officials have settled a lawsuit with prisoners that accused the state of failing to provide sufficient access to hepatitis C treatments. And in doing so, Colorado may effectively become the first state in the U.S. to provide care to all chronically infected inmates. The deal is the second such settlement among several class-action lawsuits filed against state prison systems around the country over access to the pricey medicines. A lawsuit was settled earlier this year with Massachusetts officials, while others are pending in five other states — Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. (Silverman, 9/13)

Reveal/The Marshall Project/USA Today: Seven States Ban Victim Aid To People With Criminal Records
Florida is one of seven states that bar people with a criminal record from receiving victim compensation. The laws are meant to keep limited funds from going to people who are deemed undeserving. But the rules have had a broader effect: An analysis of records in two of those states — Florida and Ohio — shows that the bans fall hardest on black victims and their families, like the Campbells. (Santo, 9/13)

Miami Herald: How Will Outcome Of Governor’s Race Affect Healthcare? Depends On Florida Legislature.
Even if Democrats take back the governor’s mansion, don’t expect Medicaid expansion — let alone Medicare for all — in Florida any time soon. That’s the message from leaders of the Florida Legislature as the governor’s race between Democrat Andrew Gillum and Republican Ron DeSantis inches toward its November conclusion. (Koh and Wilson, 9/13)

Houston Chronicle: Health Care Angst Fuels Texas Democrats In Congressional Races 
Ads don’t always tell the whole story: Hurd was one of 20 Republicans who defected from his party at a pivotal moment last year — the repeal of the Affordable Care Act by a narrow margin in the GOP-run House. With or without details, Democrats across the country are unleashing a fusillade of commercials and campaign tactics tied to health care, the issue many see as the ticket to regaining control of the House in November. (Lambrecht, 9/13)

WBUR: Mixed Results From State's Attempts To Contain Health Care Costs
The $61.1 billion spent last year was just a 1.6 percent increase, well below a state imposed benchmark. But health insurance premiums rose at two to four times that rate, and the total we shelled out for deductibles, co-pays and other out of pocket expenses rose faster too: at almost six percent. (Becker, 9/13)

The Oregonian: Medical Practice Bookkeeper Accused Of Embezzling $1 Million
A former office manager and bookkeeper for a La Grande urologist is accused of embezzling about $1 million from the medical practice and then impersonating an IRS official in an effort to conceal the scheme. Anndrea D. Jacobs, 47, of La Grande made her first appearance in U.S. District Court in Portland after her arrest Thursday morning on a 15-count indictment. She entered not guilty pleas to four counts of wire fraud, five counts of filing false tax returns, four counts of aiding in the preparation of a false tax document, impersonation of a U.S. employee and aggravated identity theft.  (Bernstein, 9/13)

San Francisco Chronicle: Court Throws Out California Law Raising Money For Hazardous Cleanup
Rejecting a 2015 state law, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday that California cannot charge railroads a $45-per-car fee for carrying crude oil, gasoline and other hazardous materials into the state to help pay for cleanup costs resulting from environmental accidents. The fee, part of a companion bill to the state budget, was intended to raise up to $10 million a year to pay for state and local emergency-response programs for spills of hazardous substances. (Egelko, 9/13)

The Star Tribune: Fairview Southdale Cited For Secret Videotaping
A federal Medicare investigation has found that Fairview Southdale Hospital violated the privacy rights of certain patients by taping them without their knowledge during psychiatric evaluations in the emergency department. The investigation centered on a woman who was taken to the emergency room of the Edina hospital against her will in May 2017 because police officers feared she might harm herself or others, according to a summary document released Wednesday by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). (Olson, 9/13)

Modern Healthcare: Geisinger, Intermountain, Others Form Coalition To Address Diagnostic Errors 
Geisinger, Intermountain Healthcare and 39 other leading healthcare organizations announced Thursday they are joining forces to improve the quality of medical diagnoses. The coalition, called ACT for Better Diagnosis and led by the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, will focus on identifying the main causes of diagnostic errors and working toward solutions. The coalition is the largest effort to focus on the issue to date. The Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine formed a similar coalition in 2015 but it only included 14 organizations. (Castellucci, 9/13)

WBUR: Would You Check Your Baby's DNA For Free? Most Parents In Boston Study Say 'No, Thanks'
The study, called BabySeq, ran for four years and is now beginning to publish its findings. One of its first, out this week in the journal Genetics In Medicine: Ben's parents' willingness to have his DNA analyzed is looking very much like the exception, not the rule. Of the first 3,800 families of newborns that the researchers approached at top Boston hospitals, only 268 signed up. (Goldberg, 9/13)

Kansas City Star: Gift Lets KU Hospital Expand Blood Cancer Treatment, CAR-T
The University of Kansas Hospital unit that treats blood cancers like leukemia and lymphoma is “bursting at the seams,” the head of the division said Thursday. In the last 10 years, Joseph McGuirk said, his division has gone from performing about 40 bone marrow transplants a year to 300 and become a regional destination for patients who want to try a groundbreaking immunotherapy called CAR-T because they’re out of other treatment options. (Marso, 9/13)

The Star Tribune: Medica And Mayo Partner On New Health Plans
Minnetonka-based Medica plans to start courting business from health systems across the country that want to develop insurance policies for their regional markets, and will offer access to the Mayo Clinic for complex care as part of the deal. The initiative announced Thursday would let Medica partner with health care systems that increasingly are looking to create "accountable care organizations" where insurers and care providers share the financial risks and rewards of financing care for large groups of people. (Snowbeck, 9/13)