State Highlights: Healthy Michigan Approved For Waiver; Missouri Lawmakers Clash Over Prescription Drug Monitoring Bills

The Detroit Free Press: Federal Government Approves Waiver For Healthy Michigan
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has given Michigan a waiver for its Healthy Michigan plan, allowing nearly 600,000 low-income residents to continue with health care coverage. The waiver was needed because Michigan lawmakers instituted cost-sharing initiatives and healthy behavior incentives for Healthy Michigan recipients, who are getting coverage under an expanded Medicaid program brought about by the federal Affordable Care Act. (Gray and Spangler, 12/17)

St. Louis Public Radio: Battle Over Prescription Drug Monitoring Renewed For 2016 Missouri Legislative Session
Dueling versions of legislation would each create a prescription drug monitoring program in Missouri, the only state that doesn't have one. Rep. Holly Rehder, R-Sikeston, pre-filed the House version of the bill Thursday, which would give doctors and pharmacists easy access to recent drug purchases by patients as a way to combat doctor shopping. (Griffin, 12/17)

Health News Florida: Balance Billing Solution Proposed
A state official who wants to rescue insured patients from surprise health-care bills has crafted a road map for the Florida Legislature’s upcoming session. Sha’Ron James, Florida’s Insurance Consumer Advocate, released a proposal Thursday that would shield emergency patients from so-called “balance billing” by doctors, hospitals and other health-care providers that are not part of the patient’s insurance network. This practice refers to a demand that the patient pay the difference between the amount being charged and what the insurer agrees to pay. (Gentry, 12/17)

Health News Florida: Slow Medicaid Payments Frustrate Midwives, Others
Used to be, Marianne Power could sit down one night, do all of her own billing and get paid 10 days later. That was before Florida hired private insurance companies to manage its Medicaid program in 2014. Power is a midwife in Lakeland. She’s been practicing for 17 years, and most of her patients use the Medicaid HMO program. She’s had problems since Medicaid transitioned to managed care. (Aboraya, 12/17)

Connecticut Mirror: Ethics Office Won’t Call For Wade To Recuse Herself On Cigna Deal
The Office of State Ethics is not calling for Insurance Commissioner Katharine L. Wade to recuse herself from overseeing her agency’s review of Anthem's proposal to buy Cigna, where Wade previously worked and her husband serves as an attorney. But Executive Director Carol Carson said the office has raised concerns. (Levin Becker, 12/17)

Heartland Health Monitor: Report: Kansas Ranks Near Bottom In Preparedness For Infectious Disease Outbreaks
Kansas is one of seven states that rank in the bottom tier in a newly released report measuring states’ readiness to deal with infectious disease outbreaks. The report, “Protecting Americans from Infectious Diseases,” was produced by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It finds that most states are ill-prepared to deal with the threat of antibiotic-resistant superbugs, resurgent illnesses like whooping cough, tuberculosis and gonorrhea, and other bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases. (Margolies, 12/17)

Georgia Health News: Judge Demands Quicker Action On Georgia-DOJ Settlement Deal
A federal judge Thursday told state officials and the U.S. Department of Justice to speed up efforts to reach agreement on improving Georgia’s system for people with mental illness and developmental disabilities. The hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Charles Pannell came in the wake of a September report describing Georgia’s lack of progress in moving people with developmental disabilities out of state hospitals. (Miller, 12/17)

St. Louis Public Radio: Signature Gathering Underway For Plan To Hike Missouri's Tobacco Tax By 23 Cents A Pack
After months of mulling over the details, an unlikely coalition of convenience stores, gas stations and low-cost cigarette companies has hit the streets to collect signatures for a proposed 23-cent-a-pack hike in Missouri’s tobacco tax – now the nation’s lowest. Under the initiative petition that the group began circulating this week, the estimated $100 million a year that the higher tax would raise would be designated for the state’s transportation needs. (Mannies, 12/17)

Reuters: Transgender Arkansas Inmate Denied Right To Sue Prison-Court
A transgender Arkansas inmate in a men's prison who castrated herself cannot sue prison officials for refusing to provide hormone therapy to assist her efforts to change genders, a federal appeals court ruled on Thursday. The court in a panel decision said Arkansas prison officials had heeded the advice of their medical professionals in declining to provide the inmate with hormone therapy and thus did not display "deliberate indifference" to her complaint, the court said. (Barnes, 12/17)

California Healthline: New Programs Raise Bar For Behavioral Health In L.A. County, Statewide
If you haven't heard much about the effects of the Excellence in Mental Health Act yet, you're not alone. However, that's about to change. New programs launched this fall will shine what many advocates say is a long-overdue spotlight on the delivery of community behavioral health services in California and 23 other states. (Stephens, 12/17)

The Associated Press: Judge Blocks NYC Flu Vaccine Requirement For Preschoolers
Five mothers sued last month. They argued that the 2013 Department of Health and Mental Hygiene rule was invalid because it wasn’t voted on by the Legislature. They also argued they would be excluded from certain types of preschools if they chose not to get their children immunized. (12/17)

The Detroit Free Press: Detroit Council Passes Restrictions On Pot Dispensaries
The Detroit City Council passed an ordinance Thursday that could drastically curtail the city's booming medical marijuana industry. Many of the city's more than 150 pot shops are in violation of the new zoning law, which takes effect March 1. By a 6-1 vote, the council passed an ordinance that will prohibit the shops from operating within 1,000 feet of a church, school, park, liquor store, other marijuana shops and other places considered a drug-free zone under city law, such as libraries and child-care centers. The council rejected an amendment that would've limited the stores even further, to only the city's industrially zoned areas. (Guillen, 12/17)

NJ Spotlight: Helping Improve Health By Making It Easier To Remember To Take Medicine
When patients are prescribed medicine for chronic conditions, studies show, they stick to the schedule for taking the medicine only half of the time. Proposed legislation aims to do something about that. The bill, A-333/S-3111, would allow pharmacists, with the consent of patients, to be paid extra to synchronize patients’ prescriptions when they don’t begin and end on the same days. Pharmacists already do this for Medicare recipients, but the legislation would allow them to follow the same practice for everyone else. Pharmacists argue that it’s badly needed, since studies have shown that patients who have prescriptions that are out of sync are 50 percent to 70 percent less likely to take their medications. (Kitchenman, 12/17)