EMPORIA, Kan. (AP) — A suspect in a 2013 Emporia homicide has made his first court appearance after being returned from Mexico.

Gabino Ruiz-Ascensio was in Lyon County court Monday, where a preliminary hearing for the 27-year-old suspect was scheduled for Jan. 8.

Ruiz-Ascensio is charged with first-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder. Police say two men were shot at an Emporia home in April 2013. Twenty-five-year-old Andrian Peralta died three days later, while 22-year-old Michael Koy was injured.

The Emporia Gazette reports Ruiz-Ascensio was found in Mexico in early November and was returned to Lyon County Detention Center on Friday.

Ruiz-Ascensio was initially arrested on minor charges in Mexico and arrested after a check turned up his warrant in the Emporia case.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Roy Blunt (Mo.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) joined a bipartisan group of their colleagues today to demand a delay in the planned consolidation of up to 82 U.S. Postal Service (USPS) mail processing facilities, including two in Missouri.

The letter was sent after the USPS Inspector General found the Postal Service failed to fulfill its obligations to adequately study the impact of the consolidations and failed to inform the public of those impacts. To read a copy of the Senators’ letter, please click here.

“We strongly urge the USPS to delay implementation of any mail processing consolidations until feasibility studies are completed and there has been adequate time for public comment and consideration of those comments,” the Senators wrote.

“There is no reason that the USPS cannot delay its consolidations to provide time for the public to see and comment on the service standard worksheets,” the Senators continued. “It is only fair to allow the process to unfold in this way, and the USPS gains little by deciding to continue the consolidation process on its current, arbitrary timeline.”

JOE HARRIS, Associated Press

ST. LOUIS (AP) — A St. Louis Rams official and a county police chief are differing over whether the team apologized for five players who raised their hands during pregame festivities in a show of solidarity with Ferguson protesters.

The Post-Dispatch (http://bit.ly/15NgjaB ) reports St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar told his staff by email Monday that Kevin Demoff, executive vice president of football operations for the Rams, called “to apologize to our department” for the action before kickoff Sunday.

Demoff later denied he apologized, but a police sergeant said the chief interpreted the call to be an apology.

The players won’t face discipline for Sunday’s “Hands up. Don’t Shoot!” protest. The action stemmed from a grand jury’s decision a week ago not to indict the police officer who fatally shot 18-year-old Michael Brown.

STEPHEN OHLEMACHER, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are moving to pass a one-year extension of temporary tax breaks affecting millions of businesses and individuals.

Most of the more than 50 tax breaks expired at the end of 2013, so the extension would only run through the end of the month. However, it would allow taxpayers to claim the tax breaks when they file their 2014 returns.

The tax breaks benefit big corporations and small businesses, as well as commuters, teachers and people who live in states without a state income tax.

Senate Democrats and House Republicans were negotiating to make some of the tax breaks permanent, but talks faltered.

A House GOP aide said the House could vote on the package this week. The aide was not authorized to speak publicly about the package.

JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – The Missouri Supreme Court is hearing arguments against city ordinances that use traffic cameras to ticket people for running red lights or speeding.

The high court was to hear appeals Tuesday in three separate cases challenging traffic-camera ordinances by municipalities in St. Louis and St. Charles counties and in St. Louis city.

Lower courts have invalidated the local ordinances, in part because they said the ordinances conflicted with state laws governing traffic violations. The cities have appealed.

State legislators considered bills earlier this year that would have set forth a legal framework for traffic enforcement cameras. But the measures failed to pass during the session that ended in May.

By Julie Appleby
Kaiser Health News
Jordan Rau
Kaiser Health News

WASHINGTON, D.C. — A surge in health insurer competition appears to be helping restrain premium increases in hundreds of counties next year, with prices dropping in many places where newcomers are offering the least expensive plans, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis of federal premium records.

KHN looked at premiums for the lowest-cost silver plan for a 40-year-old in 34 states where the federal government is running marketplaces for people who do not get coverage through their employers. Consumers have until Feb. 15 to enroll for coverage in 2015, the marketplace’s second year.
The number of insurers offering silver plans, the most popular type of plan in 2014, is increasing in two-thirds of counties, according to the analysis. In counties that are adding at least one insurer next year, premiums for the least expensive silver plan are rising 1 percent on average. Where the number of insurers is not changing, premiums are growing 7 percent on average.

“They are moving in where they see an overpriced area,” said Gerard Anderson, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University.

In the federal marketplaces, the average county premium for the cheapest silver plan is rising 3 percent, from $266 to $273. But it is the inverse in counties where a new carrier is offering the cheapest plan. In those counties, premiums had been high, averaging $284, but they are dropping by an average of 3 percent, bringing them in line with the national average, the analysis found.

In Clark and Harrison counties in southern Indiana, where only one insurer offered coverage this year, four more are jumping in. Monthly premiums for the cheapest silver plan are decreasing by 25 percent, with 40-year-olds paying $197 for the Ambetter plan from a Medicaid-managed care company, MHS.

“As a direct result of those new players being part of the market, they displaced what had been the lowest-cost silver plan,” said Brian Liechty, an Indiana insurance agent. “So it changed the dynamics.”

In parts of southwest Georgia around Albany, which has only one insurer on the marketplace and is the second most expensive place in the nation to buy coverage this year, one of three new carriers, Coventry Health Care of Georgia, is offering the lowest silver plan. The price in those five counties will decline 21 percent for all ages, down to $363 for a 40-year-old. Still, that premium remains higher than much of the rest of the country.

Joe Antos, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said carriers that avoided the rough first year were able to study what their competitors were offering before jumping in. “This was a bet that paid off,” Antos said.

Many insurers were cautious about widely offering policies in 2014 without a good sense of how much others were charging and how expensive it would be to provide medical services to new customers. UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation’s largest insurers, offered plans in only four marketplaces this year nationwide but says it is selling plans in 23 states in 2015.
United is offering the cheapest silver plans in 9 percent of the counties in the federal marketplace, more than any other company, the analysis shows. The largest 2015 premium decrease in federal marketplaces — 28 percent — is occurring in three Mississippi counties where United came in and undercut the monopoly insurer.

Heather Kane, United’s vice president for exchange strategy, said many of United’s plans are HMOs with smaller networks of doctors and hospitals than what United offers through its employer plans. Kane said United structured its new plans after studying which policies from competitors were most popular.

“Consumers voted for affordability,” she said.

In Kansas, a new entrant into counties is a subsidiary of a company already offering plans. BlueCross and BlueShield of Kansas created BlueCross BlueShield Kansas Solutions, a restrictive HMO that will not pay anything for non-emergency medical services outside its service area. This subsidiary is offering the lowest cost plan in 103 Kansas counties.

“In every state it looks like more competition is coming in,” said Bobby Huffaker, CEO of American Exchange, a brokerage based in Chattanooga, Tenn.

Elsewhere, competition is not a guarantee of dropping prices. In four dozen counties where Humana is coming in to offer the lowest-priced silver plan, premiums for those plans average 11 percent higher than what is offered this year.

In Chattanooga, one of the least expensive areas this year, consumers will have to pay 16 percent more for the cheapest silver plan, offered by Community Health Alliance, even though the number of carriers doubled to four. Despite the hike, Chattanooga remains less expensive than average. Elsewhere some counties with a monopoly insurer remain cheaper than counties with two competitors.

Silver plans are popular in part because they offer consumers mid-level premiums with deductibles that are not sky high. They tend to carry annual deductibles of between $1,500 and $5,000 and require insurers to pick up an average of 70 percent of medical costs. The federal government subsidizes premiums for those earning less than four times the nation’s poverty level.

Many consumers will not benefit from the lowest-priced silver plan if they opt to keep what they currently have, because premiums are growing sharply for many of this year’s cheapest plans. Liechty, the Indiana broker, noted that changing can be complicated for consumers, particularly those that want to keep their doctors and hospitals. “Most people,” he said, “don’t want to put themselves in a situation where they have to change plans every year.”

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Kansas Supreme Court is having a special session this week to swear Caleb Stegall in as its newest justice.

The ceremony is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Friday.

Stegall currently is a Kansas Court of Appeals judge. Gov. Sam Brownback elevated him to the state’s highest court in August.

It was Brownback’s first appointment to the seven-member Supreme Court.

Stegall will replace former Justice Nancy Moritz. She was appointed to the federal appeals court for Kansas and five other western and Plains states.

Stegall is 43 and was serving as Brownback’s chief counsel when the governor appointed him to the Court of Appeals last year. He served as Jefferson County’s elected prosecutor for two years before joining Brownback’s staff in January 2011.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A 38-year-old woman has been charged in a police chase that ended when an SUV slammed into a downtown Kansas City building and caused a partial collapse.

Jackson County prosecutors on Monday charged Sinead Lynch of Overland Park, Kansas, with tampering with a motor vehicle, fleeing from a police stop and carless and imprudent driving.

Authorities say she was driving a stolen SUV on Nov. 20 when Kansas City police officers tried to pull her over. They say she reached speeds of 80 mph before crashing into the partially abandoned building, which was being used to store vintage cars. Damage to the structure has been estimated at $300,000.

County jail records didn’t list an attorney for Lynch.