State Highlights: Roundup Manufacturer Asks Calif. Appeals Court To Throw Out $78M Verdict; Louisiana House Approves Amendment To Ban Abortion

Reuters: Bayer Asks California Appeals Court To Throw Out $78 Million Roundup Verdict
Bayer AG on Wednesday asked a California appellate court to throw out a $78 million judgment it was ordered to pay to a school groundskeeper who claimed the company's weed killers gave him cancer. In a filing in California's Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, the company said that there was "no evidence" that glyphosate, a chemical found in the company's Roundup and Ranger Pro products, could cause cancer. (4/24)

New Orleans Times-Picayune: Amendment To Make Abortion Unconstitutional In Louisiana Gets House Approval 
An amendment that would change the Louisiana Constitution to say there is no right to an abortion or public funding allowed for the procedure passed the Louisiana House of Representatives on Tuesday (April 23). Lawmakers approved state Rep. Katrina Jackson’s HB 425, called the Love Life Amendment, with an 80-10 vote. The bill now moves on to the Senate, where it needs a two-thirds vote to gain approval. The amendment would then be placed on the Nov. 16, 2019, ballot, at which point voters will decide whether to approve the measure. (Clark, 4/24)

The Associated Press: Lawyer: Massacre Suspect Allowed To Play Violent Video Games
An attorney representing the father of a victim in last year's Florida high school massacre told a judge that mental health counselors must share the blame, because they knew Nikolas Cruz was "a ticking time bomb" long before the mass shooting, and their actions sped up the explosion. Cruz's counselors supported his use of violent video games, and even suggested he get a punching bag and do target practice with non-lethal guns in hopes of containing his violent tendencies, according to the lawyer representing Andrew Pollack, whose daughter Meadow Pollack was among the 17 people killed. (4/24)

Pioneer Press: Dakota County Lyft Program Gets People With Disabilities To Work
Dakota County and ridesharing service Lyft are partnering to give certain residents on Medicaid waivers a new transportation option to and from work. The partnership is a pilot project focused on helping people with disabilities find work in nonpublic transit locations or hours, the county announced recently. Any residents who receive home and community-based services are eligible for the free program that started in April. (Clarey, 4/24)

The Star Tribune: Minnesota House DFL Puts Off Sweeping Health Care Budget For Another Day
Minnesota House Democrats on Wednesday inched toward passage of a sweeping health and human services budget that would reshape the state's insurance and prescription drug markets, setting the stage for an end-of-session clash with Senate Republicans over the future of health care in Minnesota. The House majority's spending proposal, which would funnel $15 billion to health and human services programs over two years, is a vehicle for some of the biggest policy debates looming over the nation's only divided Legislature. It includes a proposal from Democratic Gov. Tim Walz to allow all Minnesotans to buy into a public option on the state insurance marketplace and ends a private insurer subsidy program that lowered premiums on the individual market, replacing it with direct consumer discounts. (Van Oot, 4/24)

Tampa Bay Times: Lawmakers Seek Compromise On Hospitals’ Medicaid Reimbursements In Healthcare Budget Talks
The Florida House advanced its first counteroffer on how to reimburse hospitals for Medicaid cases late Wednesday night, suggesting that it and the state Senate were moving toward a potential compromise on one of the thorniest disputes between the chambers sooner than expected. During a joint conference of some of the Legislature’s lawmakers on the state’s health care budget, leaders announced that the House, which had advanced a plan to trim inpatient and outpatient payments to hospitals for Medicaid cases, was offering to roll back the proposed 3 percent cut to the state’s overall hospital Medicaid funding. (Koh, 4/24)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Court Expands Wisconsin Medicaid Coverage Of Transgender Surgery
A lawsuit challenging Wisconsin's rule denying Medicaid coverage for medically necessary transgender surgeries has become a class action that could benefit hundreds of affected residents. An estimated 5,000 transgender Wisconsin residents are enrolled in Medicaid. But only some of them suffer from gender dysphoria, and only a portion of those would desire gender-confirming surgeries and meet the medically necessary threshold for coverage of the treatment. (Vielmetti, 4/24)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: A Hidden Crisis For The Severely Sick And Mentally Ill: Pa. Has No Facilities Left For Them
His family blames the jail and the state Department of Human Services, which, under a settlement with the ACLU, has struggled to reduce wait times for care at Norristown and Torrance State Hospitals — the only remaining state forensic psychiatric hospitals in Pennsylvania, where people with serious mental illnesses are cared for until they are competent for trial. Those hospitals will not accept individuals with acute medical needs such as Deska, which means they’re effectively stranded in jail. (Melamed, 4/24)

New Hampshire Public Radio: State Lawmakers Poised To Expand Telemedicine In New Hampshire
Lawmakers at the State House heard testimony on a bill Wednesday that would pave the way for an expansion of telemedicine in New Hampshire. Senate bill 258 would add primary care physicians and pediatricians to the list of doctors in New Hampshire who can bill Medicaid and private insurers for telemedicine. (Moon, 4/24)

Boston Globe: Lifespan Says Partners Takeover Of Care New England Would Cost R.I.
Seeking to block a deal between two of its rivals, Rhode Island’s largest health care provider went on the offensive Wednesday, launching a public relations campaign claiming Partners HealthCare’s proposed acquisition of Care New England Health System would lead to higher costs for local patients and shift jobs to Massachusetts. (McCluskey and McGowan, 4/24)

Kaiser Health News: States Weigh Banning A Widely Used Pesticide Even Though EPA Won’t
Lawmakers in several states are trying to ban a widely used pesticide that the Environmental Protection Agency is fighting to keep on the market. The pesticide, chlorpyrifos, kills insects on contact by attacking their nervous systems. Several studies have linked prenatal exposure of chlorpyrifos to lower birth weights, lower IQs, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and other developmental issues in children. But the EPA in 2017 ignored the conclusions of its scientists and rejected a proposal made during the Obama administration to ban its use in fields and orchards. (Ibarra, 4/25)

The Philadelphia Inquirer: There Are Fewer 5-Star Rated Philadelphia-Area Nursing Homes Under New Federal System
The number of five-star nursing homes in the Philadelphia region fell by 20 percent, from 74 to 59, under a modified regimen for nursing-home ratings, federal data released Wednesday show. The number of one-star facilities in the eight-county region, which has a total of 236 nursing homes, jumped 58 percent, from 24 to 38. (Brubaker, 4/24)

Miami Herald: FL Lawmakers To Give Firefighters Coverage For Cancer
Firefighters in Florida will soon receive health coverage for cancer as part of their jobs, after House lawmakers voted Wednesday to designate the disease as an occupational hazard for those first responders. The votes, unanimous in both chambers of the state Legislature, are a win for firefighters who have sought such coverage for several years running. (Koh, 4/24)

North Carolina Health News: Rousing A Community To The Effects Of Child Abuse In Cumberland County 
Instead of framing abuse as a problem shouldered by individual families, an ambitious effort by a collection of two dozen nonproft partners, government groups and concerned residents are instead naming it a community problem deserving of a community-wide solution. The S.O.A.R.(Strengths in Overcoming Adversity thru Resiliency) program aims to use evidence-based strategies to make families stronger and more resilient to the ups and downs of life that can lead to parents lashing out or exposing children to harmful environments. (Ovaska-Few, 4/25)

Iowa Public Radio: Study Finds Thousands Of Iowans Are Drinking Contaminated Well Water
A survey of state data shows thousands of private wells in Iowa have been contaminated with nitrates and coliform bacteria. Under state law, most of Iowa’s private wells don’t have to be tested, and don’t have to meet water quality standards, leaving the residents who rely on them especially vulnerable. (Payne, 4/24)

Texas Tribune: Dallas Paid Sick Leave Requirement Passed By City Council
Amid a debate in the Texas Capitol over whether such rules should be banned statewide, the Dallas City Council on Wednesday passed a new ordinance requiring employers in the city to offer paid sick leave to their employees. The ordinance is similar to ones city leaders in both San Antonio and Austin put in place, though Austin’s ordinance is currently on hold after an appeals court said it was unconstitutional. (Samuels, 4/24)

Iowa Public Radio: Policy Group Argues For Tax Increases To Expand Water Quality Programs
Iowa is spending a fraction of what should be budgeted toward improving water quality, according to an analysis by the nonprofit Iowa Policy Project. The group argues state lawmakers should raise taxes in order to put more money toward solutions, but that doesn’t appear to be under consideration just yet. (Gerlock, 4/24)

KCUR: Rapidly Expanding AdventHealth Extends Its Reach To Ottawa, Kansas 
AdventHealth will take over operation of Ransom Memorial Health, a 44-bed acute-care hospital in Ottawa, Kansas, the Florida-based health system announced on Wednesday. Ransom Memorial will be renamed AdventHealth Ottawa. It joins other members of the AdventHealth network, including AdventHealth Shawnee Mission in Merriam, Kansas, formerly known as Shawnee Mission Medical Center. In 2017, Ransom Memorial partnered with Shawnee Mission Medical Center to offer expanded cardiology services at Ransom Memorial. (Margolies, 4/24)