State Highlights: Connecticut’s Health Exchange Balks At Cumbersome Abortion Billing Rule; 1 In 3 Adults Admitted To Tennessee’s Psychiatric Hospitals Will Return Within 6 Months

The CT Mirror: Access Health CT To Protest New Trump Abortion Proposal
Connecticut’s Affordable Care Act exchange, Access Health CT, is protesting a Trump administration plan that would require the nation’s insurers to send a separate bill to consumers who purchase plans with abortion coverage. The Trump administration proposed changes earlier this month to how abortion coverage is billed. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid, which has authority over the ACA, said it wanted to ensure that people who purchase health care coverage in ACA exchanges and receive federal subsidies to pay for their premiums and other expenses are not violating the Hyde Amendment, a federal law that bars the use of federal dollars to provide abortion services. (Radelat, 11/16)

Nashville Tennessean: 13 Suicide Attempts, 18 Hospitalizations, Few Options: Lost In Tennessee's Mental Care System
The goal of Tennessee’s public psychiatric hospitals is to serve as a last-resort safety net to stabilize patients in crisis and then link them to ongoing treatment in their communities. Yet, nearly one in three adults admitted to Tennessee’s public psychiatric hospitals will return within six months, according to federal data. Thousands more are turned away each year because they do not meet Tennessee's strict involuntary admission law. They then face limited access to ongoing mental health care even if they have insurance. Few have insurance. Tennessee's mental illness care system as a whole is overburdened. (Bliss and Wadhwani, 11/17)

Boston Globe: Boston’s Transgender Community Gathers To Remember Rita Hester
The day after Thanksgiving in 1998, Rita Hester was murdered in Allston — just two days before her 35th birthday. Hester was — by all accounts — glamorous, brilliant, and driven. She was also a transgender woman. Her murder has yet to be solved. Twenty years later, roughly 300 people gathered inside the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Downtown Crossing for the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. The event started in Boston after Hester’s death, spread to San Francisco, and is now observed around the world. (Kilgannon, 11/18)

The New York Times: Ohio House Passes Bill To Criminalize Abortions Of Fetuses With A Heartbeat
The Ohio House of Representatives this week passed one of the most restrictive abortion bills in the country — one that would penalize doctors for performing an abortion when a fetal heartbeat can be detected and pose a potential challenge to Roe v. Wade. A fetal heartbeat can be detected by an ultrasound as early as six weeks into a pregnancy, a time during which most women are unaware they are pregnant. (Caren, 11/16)

Houston Chronicle: Is Bigger Better? Memorial Hermann And Baylor Scott & White Merger Raises Questions 
If all goes as planned, the merger of Memorial Hermann Health System of Houston and Baylor Scott & White Health in Dallas would create a $14 billion health care behemoth, with increased muscle to negotiate better deals and the flexibility to innovate in challenging times. The hospitals’ leaders insist bigger is better, and patients will be the winners, benefiting from easier access to medical services, greater efficiency and lower costs after merger closes next year. The nation’s health economists are less certain. (Deam, 11/16)

The Associated Press: Texas Hospital System Accused Of Holding Patients Illegally
A Texas corporation that runs behavioral health hospitals is accused of illegally holding four patients, two of whom were voluntary patients who were allegedly prohibited from leaving. SAS Healthcare Inc. was indicted Wednesday on nine counts of violating the Texas Mental Health Code, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. (11/16)

Modern Healthcare: LifePoint, RCCH HealthCare Partners Merger Finalized 
LifePoint Health is officially merged with RCCH HealthCare Partners, the companies announced Friday. Affiliates of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which owns RCCH, are purchasing LifePoint, a Brentwood, Tenn.-based rural hospital operator. They're paying LifePoint shareholders $65 per share in cash, representing a premium of about 36% to LifePoint's closing share price on July 20, the last trading day prior to the merger's announcement. (Bannow, 11/16)

Reuters: California Judge Orders Next Monsanto Weed-Killer Cancer Trial For March
A California judge on Thursday granted an expedited trial in the case of a California couple suffering from cancer who sued Bayer AG's Monsanto unit, alleging the company's glyphosate-containing weed killer Roundup caused their disease. The order by Superior Court Judge Ioana Petrou in Oakland, California, comes on the heels of a $289 million verdict in the first glyphosate trial in San Francisco, in which a jury found Monsanto liable for causing a school groundskeeper's cancer. (11/16)

Health News Florida: Judge Throws Out Lawsuit Brought By Pulse Survivors, Victims' Families
A federal judge has thrown out two lawsuit filed by more than 50 survivors and victims’ families in the Pulse nightclub shooting. The civil lawsuit alleged the city of Orlando, police officers and an off-duty officer didn’t do enough to stop the shooter, and that the city failed to provide adequate training for its officers. (Byrne, 11/16)

Dallas Morning News: Frisco-Based Novus Paid For Nurses At Assisted Living Facilities In Exchange For Patient Access, Plea Deal Alleges 
The marketing director for a shuttered hospice company has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors over his role in recruiting patients as part of a $60 million health-care fraud scheme. Slade C. Brown, 49, of Plano has agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit health-care fraud. His is the sixth such plea agreement in the criminal investigation into Frisco-based Novus, which operated one of the largest hospice companies in North Texas before it closed in late 2015. (Wigglesworth, 11/17)

Seattle Times: $800M For A New Western State Hospital? Washington Ponders What’s Needed To Bring Psychiatric Facility Into Compliance 
The Washington Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) has requested $800 million from the state to build a new psychiatric facility on Western State Hospital’s existing campus for patients coming from the criminal-justice system. The request is one of many ideas being floated over how to improve the state’s troubled mental-health system, which has suffered from staffing shortages, safety issues and a lack of available beds for people. (O'Sullivan, 11/16)

Health News Florida: Workshop Guides Florida Educators On Teaching Climate Change And Its Human Impacts
Florida teachers are eager to teach kids about sea-level rise, rising heat and other impacts of climate change, but many say it can be hard to find engaging and in-depth information in their textbooks or the state curriculum. A workshop on Wednesday offered about 30 Florida educators ideas and resources for climate education. (Stein, 11/16)

Boston Globe: Meet The First Recreational Marijuana Customers In Massachusetts: A Pair Of Veterans
A pair of veterans will stand at the center of history-making moments scheduled for this week: the first legal marijuana sales in Massachusetts in more than a century. At 8 a.m. on Tuesday, Iraq veteran and medical marijuana advocate Stephen Mandile will walk into Cultivate, a hybrid medical-recreational cannabis shop in Leicester, and buy a quarter-ounce of pot — preferably a sativa — plus some edibles. (Adams, 11/19)

Des Moines Register: Iowa Doctors Hesitate To Help Patients Join Medical Marijuana Program
Many Iowa doctors have qualms about helping patients qualify for the state's new medical marijuana program, which is set launch Dec. 1. The program’s rules ask doctors to certify that patients have specific medical conditions allowing them to participate. Doctors will have no role in prescribing the products, which five dispensaries will sell to Iowans who have obtained special state cards. So far, only about 325 of Iowa’s 7,000 actively practicing physicians have certified people for the program, confirming that the patients have conditions such as intractable pain, cancer or epilepsy. (Leys, 11/16)

The Associated Press: Police: Doc OK'd Pot For Patients Via Closed-Circuit TV
Police in South Florida say a 66-year-old doctor is accused of giving patients medical marijuana cards without meeting them in person, conducting physical exams or requiring a debilitating medical condition. The SunSentinel reports Tommy Louisville used closed-circuit television to evaluate patients who came to Miracle Leaf Health Center in Pembroke Pines. Louisville was arrested Thursday and had his medical license restricted. Prosecutors say he appears to be the first Florida doctor charged with illegally prescribing marijuana since voters legalized the drug in 2016. (11/16)