WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A suburban Kansas City lawmaker is proposing a measure that would allow terminally ill patients to use medications that haven’t received federal approval.
KAKE-TV reports Shawnee Republican Rep. Brett Hildabrand plans to present the “Right to Try” bill when legislators return to Topeka on Jan. 12.
Hildabrand says the government shouldn’t stand in the way of anything that could potentially extend the lives of people with terminal illnesses.
Five other states — Missouri, Colorado, Michigan, Louisiana and Arizona — already have approved similar legislation.
The initiative is being spearheaded by the Arizona-based nonprofit Goldwater Institute, which says the effort is designed to allow patients access to investigational drugs that have completed basic safety testing.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Lawrence police say there wasn’t probable cause to arrest a man after a three-hour armed standoff at an apartment complex.
The Lawrence Journal-World reports the man was taken into custody Monday after police obtained a search warrant to enter his apartment.
Officers believed he was connected to an alleged aggravated assault in which a person’s car was taken and a man threatened the alleged victim with a handgun.
Police spokesman Sgt. Trent McKinley says officers determined there wasn’t enough probable cause to book the suspect into jail so he was released after briefly taken into custody.
McKinley declined to provide additional details of the standoff because of the ongoing investigation.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A longtime legislative liaison and manager for the Kansas commission that regulates utilities will oversee payroll, parking, secretarial and other services for state lawmakers, starting next month.
The Kansas Legislature’s top leaders Tuesday hired Tom Day as director of legislative administrative services.
The 61-year-old Day is from Lawrence and is acting executive director of the Kansas Corporation Commission. He has been its legislative liaison and a public service executive since 1999.
Day expects to start his new, $85,000-a-year job Jan. 7, five days before legislators open their annual 90-day session. He’ll replace Jeff Russell, who retired in September after nearly 17 years.
Day’s appointment had bipartisan support. Top lawmakers pointed to his experience both as a liaison and in handling personnel and building management issues with the KCC.
NEW YORK (AP) — Rocker Jon Bon Jovi donned a New York Police Department T-shirt on stage. Well-wishers delivered cookies to police in Cincinnati. In Mooresville, North Carolina, officers were treated by residents to a chili dinner.
At a time when many in the nation’s police community feel embattled, Americans across the country are making an effort to express their support.
The immediate catalyst for the surge of support was the execution-style killings of two New York City police officers on Saturday. For many of those making appreciative gestures, there also was a desire to counter the widespread protests — steeped with criticism of police — that followed grand jury decisions not to charge white officers for their roles in the deaths of black men in Ferguson, Missouri, and in New York
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration is building a legal case against companies that sell pure powdered caffeine, which can be fatal even in small doses.
The FDA warned consumers to avoid pure powdered caffeine this summer after the death of an Ohio teen. Some major retailers have stopped selling it in bulk, but the substance is still widely available on the Internet and in some stores.
Even a teaspoon of the powder, which is equivalent to 25 cups of coffee, can be lethal. Eighteen-year-old Logan Stiner of LaGrange, Ohio, died in May after consuming it. It was also linked to the death of a Georgia man this year.
FDA Deputy Commissioner Michael Taylor says it is “inherently irresponsible” to market such a potentially dangerous product.
TOPEKA — State officials say they’re having a hard time contacting people with disabilities who’ve expressed an interest in receiving Medicaid-funded services designed to help them live in community-based settings.
Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services Secretary Kari Bruffett on Friday said that between Jan. 1 and Dec. 15, the agency had reached out to 1,627 people on its waiting list for services for people with physical disabilities.
More than 830 of these individuals are now receiving services.
In November, agency officials renewed their attempt to contact individuals thought to still be on the waiting list. Those efforts, so far, have generated only another 150 responses.
“We’ve had a challenge in getting responses,” Bruffett said, acknowledging that the agency may not yet have valid addresses and telephone numbers for many of the would-be recipients.
In the past 11 months, 667 people have been dropped from the waiting lists because KDADS workers couldn’t find them, or because they have refused services or have been declared ineligible.
KDADS employees, Bruffett said, will continue reaching out to people — or their families — who have expressed an interest in obtaining services.
Eventually, she said, the department should be able to achieve significant reductions in the waiting lists for people with physical and developmental disabilities.
Last week, 2,058 Kansans with physical disabilities were known to be waiting for services as were 3,134 people with developmental disabilities.
Rosie Cooper is executive director of the Kansas Association of Centers for Independent Living, a coalition of regional programs that help people with physical disabilities navigate the state’s service delivery system.
She said problems remain with the KDADS list.
“On Thursday, I let KDADS know about a lady who’d gotten a ‘notice of action’ letter saying that she was being removed from the waiting list,” Cooper said. “She got the letter the day before Thanksgiving even though the date on the letter was Nov. 7. No one had ever contacted her with an offer.”
The woman has been on the waiting list since July 2011, Cooper said, and has made several calls to her local KDADS office since receiving her cut-off letter. As of Monday afternoon, she said, the woman’s calls had not been returned.
“I don’t want to say KDADS numbers are wrong,” she said. “I just don’t know how they came up with them. There seems to be a lot of confusion.”
ruffett spoke Friday during the department’s annual forum on KanCare, which is the state’s privatized Medicaid program that is administered by three for-profit managed care companies.
Approximately 30 people attended the hourlong meeting hosted by KDADS and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. About half of the people in the audience were KDHE or KDADS employees.
During the meeting’s question-and-answer session, most of the questions regarded advocates’ concerns with KDADS-proposed changes in the waivers that define the state’s approach to helping people with disabilities and frail elders who live in community-based settings rather than in nursing homes. KDADS collected public comment on the changes through Dec. 20.
The proposed changes are subject to federal approval. Bruffett said KDADS plans to file its proposed changes with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regional office in Kansas City, Mo., by Jan. 1.
Concerns raised during the public comment session, which began in mid-November, will be addressed in the department’s plan, she said.
Responding the audience’s questions, Bruffett and other KDADS officials said:
• They were aware of that some of the proposed changes could lead to a pay cut for attendant care workers.
• The final version of the waiver affecting services for people with traumatic brain injuries probably would not be open to a second round of public comment before being forwarded to CMS.
• Issues having to do with the state’s response to a federal rule that attendant care workers have to be paid minimum wage and overtime after Jan. 1 remain unresolved.
• The managed care companies appear to be having more success in reducing turnover among their front-line workers in recent months.
Dave Ranney is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health officials are recommending an end to the nation’s lifetime ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, a 31-year-old policy that many medical groups and gay activists say is no longer justified.
The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday it favors replacing the blanket ban with a new policy barring donations from men who have had gay sex in the previous year. That policy puts the U.S. in-line with other countries including Australia, Japan and the U.K.
The lifetime ban dates from the early years of the AIDS crisis and was intended to protect the blood supply from what was a then little-understood disease. But many medical groups, including the American Medical Association, say the policy is no longer supported by science, given advances in HIV testing.
LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Court records say a Lawrence health care attendant who is charged in the killing of man with cerebral palsy told authorities the victim wanted to die.
Forty-eight-year-old Ronald Eugene Heskett, of Eudora, is charged with first-degree murder in the asphyxiation death of Vance Moulton. The 65-year-old had a towel around his head when he was found dead in September.
The newly released affidavit says Heskett told investigators that Moulton repeatedly begged to be killed. The Lawrence Journal-World reports that Heskett said he gave in after Moulton said “he just wanted to walk with his mother again.”
Heskett says he twisted a towel around Moulton’s neck and told him to lay on it.
Defense attorney Mike Warner said he didn’t want to comment until he finished reviewing the police investigation.
NEW YORK (AP) — Several movie theaters said they will begin showing “The Interview” Thursday, seemingly putting the comedy back in theaters after Sony Pictures Entertainment canceled its release.
The Alamo Drafthouse in Texas said on Tuesday that Sony has authorized it to screen the film starting Christmas Day. Atlanta’s Plaza Theater also said it will show the film.
Representatives for Sony did not immediately comment.
Such a release would enable “The Interview” to open in select theaters and avoid the national chains that dropped the North Korea satire last week. Sony’s cancellation of the movie following terrorist threats from hackers drew widespread criticism, including from President Barack Obama.
The FBI has said the attacks on Sony came from North Korea.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas and Arizona have asked an appeals court for a rehearing of its ruling that their residents can register to vote using a federal form without having proof of citizenship.
A petition filed late Monday contends the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overlooked certain issues when it sided against the states in November.
The federal appeals court ruled that Kansas and Arizona cannot demand federal election officials to help them enforce state laws requiring new voters to submit a birth certificate, passport or other papers documenting U.S. citizenship.
The court overturned an order from a federal judge in Kansas that had required the U.S. Election Assistance Commission to modify its form to require those documents.
The federal commission’s spokesman did not immediately respond to an email Tuesday seeking comment.
