State Highlights: Newly Elected Virginia Lawmakers Put Gun Safety On Progressive 2020 Agenda; University Contributes $250K To Aid Medicaid Expansion Effort In Missouri

The Washington Post: Democrats File First Bills For The New Virginia General Assembly, Staring With Equal Rights Amendment
Democratic lawmakers rushed to file bills Monday as the legislative window opened for next year’s General Assembly session, setting out voting rights, gun control, LGBTQ protections and the Equal Rights Amendment as priorities for their newfound power in the majority. It was bad timing for Republican leaders, who traveled to Richmond Monday to officially shut down the special legislative session on gun control that they had cut short over the summer. (Schneider, 11/18)

St. Louis Post Dispatch: Washington University Kicks In $ 250,000 To Back Medicaid Expansion Effort 
Washington University has put big money behind its support of Medicaid expansion in Missouri, contributing $ 250,000 on Friday to an effort that would place a question on next year’s November ballot. The check to Missourians for Healthcare came after Chancellor Andrew Martin and Dr. David Perlmutter, dean of the School of Medicine, on Nov. 4 issued a joint letter endorsing the ballot initiative. (Suntrup, 11/18)

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Children’s Wisconsin Improving Behavioral Health Care Access For Youth
Children’s Wisconsin on Tuesday will announce an ambitious five-year plan to significantly improve access to behavioral health care for children and adolescents. The plan is projected to cost $ 150 million over five years and includes an array of initiatives to address the severe shortage of psychiatrists, psychologists and therapists. Children’s Wisconsin, the new name of Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, hopes to roughly double the number of professionals who provide behavioral health care in its system. It now has 137 psychiatrists, psychologists, psychiatric nurse practitioners and therapists. (Boulton, 11/19)

The Star Tribune: DHS Financial Woes Mount As Costly Mistakes Hit Counties 
Counties and some tribes will have to foot the bill for costly mistakes made by the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), as embarrassing revelations of financial mismanagement continue to emerge. The state social services agency sent letters to counties and tribes Monday saying they will be responsible for paying back more than $ 9 million to the federal government that was improperly spent. (Howatt and Serres, 11/18)

The CT Mirror: Nonprofits Say Philanthropy Alone Can’t Save Services
To paraphrase Connecticut’s private, nonprofit social service agencies: Gov. Ned Lamont just doesn’t get it. Frustration with Lamont, who rebuffed a request from nonprofits for $ 100 million of the state’s $ 2.5 billion reserve, recently surged after the governor urged the agencies to ask more from wealthy donors. (Phaneuf, 11/19)

Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Deadly Drug-Resistant Superbug Fungus Found In Georgia
A deadly superbug fungus continues to spread around the world and has now been reported in 14 states, including Georgia. Candida auris is often resistant to multiple antifungal drugs commonly used to treat Candida infections and is difficult to recognize with standard laboratory methods, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. (Clanton, 11/18)

CalMatters: California Wildfire Alerts And Evacuations Still Ad Hoc
When a fast-moving wildfire marched toward the town of Paradise more than a year ago, few who lived there were aware of it. Even though the community used the CodeRED automated emergency warning system, less than 40% of residents subscribed to the alerts. Only 7,000 of the 52,000 residents who eventually evacuated received the emergency alert to leave.The fire incinerated cell towers and communications equipment, revealing a vulnerability of the telephone-based disaster alert system. “The only notification systems left were emergency vehicle sirens and bull horns… word-of-mouth with families and neighbors… and immediate action,” the Butte County Grand Jury reported to the Superior Court earlier this year. (Cart, 11/15)

Los Angeles Times: PG&E Power Outage Was ‘A Big Screw You’ To California, Lawmaker Says
With the threat of another power outage looming, state lawmakers hammered Pacific Gas & Electric at the state Capitol on Monday for botching shut-offs that left millions of Californians in the dark this fall and blamed the company for failing to upgrade its system over time. During an all-day hearing that included testimony from California’s investor-owned utilities, state officials and representatives of communities affected by outages, state senators vented their frustrations as they tried to identify legislative solutions to problems caused by this year’s wildfire-prevention blackouts. (Luna, 11/18)

Modern Healthcare: Sutter To Pay $ 46 Million To Settle Stark Law Claims
Sutter Health and a group of physicians agreed to pay the federal government $ 46.1 million to settle allegations that it violated the Stark law by billing Medicare for services by physicians with whom it had improper financial relationships, the Justice Department announced Friday. A 2014 whistleblower suit filed by former Sutter compliance officer Laurie Hanvey claimed Sutter Memorial Center Sacramento billed Medicare for services referred by Sacramento Cardiovascular Surgeons Medical Group physicians to whom it made payments that exceeded fair market value from 2002 through at least 2012. (Meyer, 11/18)

WBUR: Oregon Law Meant To Help Mentally Ill Has Ended Up Putting More Of Them On The Street
Oregon’s new law designed to direct suspects with a mental illness to a state hospital is leaving some behind. Those charged with misdemeanors don’t always qualify. That’s raised some alarms. (Wilson, 11/18)

Cleveland Plain Dealer: Cuyahoga County Council Proposes $ 5M-Plus Budget Boost For Seniors, Children, Mentally Ill
Cuyahoga County Council proposes spending an additional $ 5.4 million-plus over the next two years for health and human services programs that largely serve seniors, children and the mentally ill. Included in the proposal is a one-year increase for the Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services Board for those who need non-opioid-related mental health services, council’s legislative budget advisor, Trevor McAleer, told council members on Monday. (Astolfi, 11/18)

Sacramento Bee: Citrus Heights CA Settles Police Excessive Force Case
When Citrus Heights police pinned a shirtless James Bradford Nelson III to the pavement at a KFC restaurant on June 23, 2017, the temperature of the asphalt was estimated to be 170 degrees, eight degrees higher than what it takes to instantly destroy human skin. Nelson, who was 27 at the time and had lived with schizophrenia for years, was detained after a day of mental episodes that ended with him in the parking lot, where he was accused of trying to take a restaurant employee’s wallet, a charge that later was dropped. (Stanton, 11/18)

Georgia Health News: Georgia’s HIV Problem Hitting Rural Areas Hard
Metro Atlanta is often characterized as the epicenter of Georgia’s HIV crisis. Earlier this year, in fact, President Trump announced an anti-HIV plan targeting four populous counties in greater Atlanta — Fulton, DeKalb, Gwinnett and Cobb — among 48 counties in the nation. (Miller, 11/18)

Tampa Bay Times: BayCare Moves Wesley Chapel Hospital Site
BayCare Health Systems is going back to plan A for its hospital in Wesley Chapel.The health care chain is abandoning plans for a hospital in a developing area next to Interstate 75 and now wants to build a new 60-bed hospital on land it bought more than a dozen years ago along the west side of Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, south of State Road 54 in central Pasco County. The move comes almost a year after BayCare won preliminary state approval to build a new hospital farther north on 111 acres adjacent to the still-to-be constructed interchange of Interstate 75 and Overpass Road. (Bowen, 11/18)

The Baltimore Sun: Maryland Department Of Health Investigating Prepackaged Salads For Possible E. Coli Cluster
Health department officials are investigating a possible cluster of E. coli in Maryland after seven people who had contracted the bacteria all reported buying and eating the same prepackaged Caesar salad from Sam’s Club. In a news release, the department wrote that people should not eat any Ready Pac Bistro Bowl Chicken Caesar Salads with a “best by” date of Oct. 31, 2019, as tests of one of the affected people’s salad “identified the presence of E. coli O157 in the romaine lettuce.” (Davis, 11/18)