State Highlights: Fla. Officials Say Medicaid HMOs Must Keep Providing Home Health Care; Ohio Pushes Inmate Medicaid Sign-Ups

The Miami Herald: State Says Medicaid HMOs Must Keep Providing Home Health Services After Contractor's Collapse
Private insurers managing the healthcare needs of low-income, disabled and elderly Floridians with Medicaid will continue to fill prescriptions for home-based health therapists, medical equipment and infusion drugs after a Miramar-based company lost the contracts to coordinate and provide those services for patients statewide. 01U0nivita Health, a home health care company, lost all of its accounts this week with the HMOs contracted to manage the healthcare needs of Florida’s Medicaid population, according to state healthcare officials. (Chang, 8/2)

The Columbus Dispatch: State Pushes Medicaid Sign-Ups For Inmates
In the old days, inmates got $75 and a one-way bus ticket when they got out of an Ohio prison. Now, they can get something more valuable — a Medicaid card. Three state agencies are aggressively pushing to get the majority of the roughly 21,000 people who are released from prison every year enrolled in Medicaid up to 90 days before they walk out the door. Services don't' begin until they are released, unless they are hospitalized. (Johnson, 7/31)

The New York Times: Puerto Ricans Brace For Crisis In Health Care
The first visible sign that the health care system in Puerto Rico was seriously in trouble was when a steady stream of doctors — more than 3,000 in five years — began to leave the island for more lucrative, less stressful jobs on the mainland. Now, as Puerto Rico faces another hefty cut to a popular Medicare program and grapples with an alarming shortage of Medicaid funds, its health care system is headed for an all-out crisis, which could further undermine the island’s gutted economy. (Alvarez and Goodnough, 8/2)

The Washington Post: Legionnaires’ Disease, Once ‘The Greatest Epidemiological Puzzle Of The Century,’ Kills Four In N.Y.
Four decades ago it was one of medicine’s greatest mysteries, devastating a group of convention goers with shocking speed and leaving scientists scratching their heads about its cause. Now Legionnaires’ disease is back in the news, having killed four and sickened more than five dozen others in New York, with more diagnoses likely on the way. (Kaplan, 8/3)

The Denver Post: With Less Money, Colorado's Birth Control Program Feels The Pain
JoAnna Hibberd reaches for the inside of her left bicep and kneads the skin until she finds it. The birth control implant is impossible to see, and the insertion mark is less visible than a freckle. But she calls it a godsend. Hibberd, 21, received the device through a state program that provides long-acting reversible contraceptives to low-income and uninsured teenagers and women at little to no cost. If she has a complaint, it's not knowing about the program sooner. (Frank, 8/3)

ProPublica: Alabama's Meth Law, Abortion Rights And The Strange Case Of Jane Doe
In 2006, Alabama lawmakers passed a bill aimed at punishing parents who turned their kitchens and garages into do-it-yourself meth labs, exposing their children to toxic chemicals and noxious fumes. Support was bipartisan, the vote was unanimous, and the bill was quickly signed into law. Nine years later, authorities in Lauderdale County in northern Alabama have sought to use that same law to deny a 29-year-old pregnant inmate in the local jail — accused of exposing her fetus to drugs — the right to have an abortion. In doing so, they have pushed the abortion wars into uncharted territory and highlighted just how central the issue of drug use in pregnancy has become to the battle over Roe v. Wade. The case of the woman, identified only as Jane Doe, is extraordinary in many ways, including how abruptly it seems to have ended — or maybe hasn't. Earlier this month, after the woman told jail officials she was in her first trimester and wanted an abortion, the Lauderdale district attorney took the unprecedented step of petitioning a juvenile court to strip her of parental rights to her unborn child. Doe's fetus was given a court-appointed lawyer. The proceedings, like most everything that happens in juvenile court, were secret. (Martin, 7/31)

North Carolina Health News: Audit Finds Blind Services Lacked Oversight, Wasted Money
The state Division of Services for the Blind spent $29 million over more than a decade with little or no oversight or evaluation of whether what they were spending was attaining division goals. That’s according to a new report from State Auditor Beth Wood. In an audit released Thursday, Wood outlined how, since 2000, the Business Enterprise Program, run by the Department of Health and Human Services, “has spent more than $29 million without establishing Program goals and measures,” the report said. (Hoban, 7/31)

The Associated Press: Former Texas Surgeon So Derelict He Left 2 Dead
A former Dallas neurosurgeon has been described by state regulators as so derelict during operations that his actions led to the deaths of two patients and left others with disabling injuries in what’s seen as one of the worst recent cases of malpractice in Texas. Dr. Christopher Duntsch, who lost his medical license in 2013, now faces potential prison time after being indicted on multiple assault charges relating to his treatment of patients. He was being held Friday at the Dallas County Jail on bond exceeding $600,000. “You don’t see a doctor charged with this,” said Dallas County prosecutor Kevin Brooks, adding that doctors who run afoul of the law usually are accused of insurance or prescription fraud. “It’s fairly rare.” (8/2)

The Associated Press: Doctor Pleads Guilty In Colorado Painkiller Case
Authorities say a former Western Slope physician prescribed "unprecedented levels" of powerful prescription drugs to people who did not need them, contributing to a drug-abuse problem in Montrose and surrounding communities. According to plea documents, Eric Peper was indicted on dozens of counts related to health care fraud, Controlled Substance Act violations and money laundering, along with his former employer, Sam Jahani. On Wednesday, Peper pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge that can bring between two and four years in federal prison, plus three years of supervised release and up to $250,000 in fines. (8/1)

The Associated Press: NY's Medical Pot Distributors Reflect Industry's Evolution
Tie-dyed they're not. Entrepreneurs, physicians and well-heeled investors are among those authorized by New York health officials to grow and dispense medical marijuana, the latest sign that the industry has come a long way from its humble beginnings 20 years ago. (8/1)

The New York Times: New York City Starts Moving Tenants From ‘Three-Quarter’ Homes, But Others Are Left Behind
The Sleep Inn in Brooklyn is newly built, featuring rooms with tasteful flower pictures, mini-refrigerators and fresh towels. Many of its first patrons have never stayed in such a nice place. One said he felt as if he was in the sitcom “The Jeffersons,” “movin’ on up,” as the show’s theme song says. Another said it felt like the Trump Plaza. They are hardly typical hotel guests. On public assistance or federal disability, many struggle with addiction to drugs or alcohol. Some are mentally ill; others, simply homeless. The city moved them to the hotel to relieve overcrowding at so-called three-quarter homes, as part of its response to an investigation by The New York Times published in May. (Barker, 8/2)

The Charlotte Observer: A Year Later: Was Mecklenburg Response To Ebola Threat Appropriate?
Last August, only days after learning the first two Americans had contracted Ebola infection in West Africa, Mecklenburg County health officials faced a challenge: How to respond to the arrival of three healthy missionaries who had helped care for these and other Ebola patients in Liberia. In consultation with state and federal counterparts, Mecklenburg health officials chose to “err on the side of caution” by ordering quarantines – a tool they had not used for two decades. (Garloch, 8/1)