(Missourinet) – A mid-Missouri woman who tragically lost two of her children while swimming on the Lake of the Ozarks wants the state legislature to enact policies that could prevent electrical shock drownings.

On July 4, 2012, Angela Anderson says her children, Brayden and Alexandra, were enjoying the lake like they had many times. After swimming for about 10 or 15 minutes, Anderson heard the most horrific scream that she says still haunts her at night.

“And both of my children were dead. That quickly,” she says.

They died after being shocked by power running to a dock they were swimming near. Anderson, of Ashland, says lawmakers must improve safety standards at boat docks and marinas.

“There have been more electrocution-related deaths at the Lake of the Ozarks alone, than any other single state combined. There have been more electrical shock near misses on the Lake of the Ozarks than any other single state,” says Anderson.

Since 2015, four people have died at the lake from electric shock drowning. Anderson blames Ameren for failing to fix the safety issues.

“The Lake of the Ozarks is owned by Ameren. Ameren, not unable, but unwilling, to provide protection and safety for citizens and tourists of this state. That is what is taking place,” says Anderson. “It is killing people. It is nothing less than voluntary manslaughter.”

Jake Hummel (D-St. Louis) is sponsoring a bill that he hopes will avoid such future tragedies. Hummel says there are more than 20,000 docks at the lake – about 20% of those meet safety requirements like Ameren’s.

The proposal would require:

*New docks and those changing ownership to have safety inspections and meet new standards

*’No swimming’ policies around docks

*All Highway Patrol boats to have defibrillators

If the measures are not followed, the legislation calls for fines and jail time.

During a hearing Thursday, there was no opposition to the bill.

(Missourinet) – Legislation to satisfy federal REAL ID regulations has passed the Missouri House and is headed to the Senate.

Currently, the state doesn’t comply with security requirements that will be needed to board an airplane starting in January.

Republican Governor Eric Greitens said he thinks state lawmakers should wait and see if the Trump administration makes changes to existing law.

“When I was in Washington D.C., I talked with some folks in the Trump-Pence administration about this,” said Greitens. “We need to look at whether or not the Trump-Pence administration are going to actually keep the Obama era rules in place. They actually may be considering a change. If that change happens, then the IDs that we have today will actually be functional for people to fly.”

Greitens is referring to a requirement that documentation needed to obtain a driver’s license, such as a birth certificate or social security card, be scanned and stored on a database.

The rule actually predates the Obama administration.  It was passed by congress in 2005 to beef up security in response to the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

A group of Senate Republicans think the federal statute constitutes an invasion of privacy.  Majority Floor Leader Mike Kehoe (R-Jefferson City) confirms that Governor Greitens contacted the Trump administration by letter to express the chamber’s concern.

“The governor has delivered that letter to Washington D.C. to let the Trump administration know that the Missouri Senate’s preference would be that we unwind some of the effects of REAL ID, and the problems that it’s caused to some of our citizens.”

Kehoe says the Senate will seek to pass legislation later in the current session if the administration fails to change the requirement.  He said the chamber wouldn’t wait until the last week to take action.

The House approved the measure by a 99-40 vote Thursday. Democratic Senate Leader Gina Walsh says she doesn’t think the chamber can afford to delay the measure.

She says workers will have to have access to the nuclear power plant in Calloway County for an upcoming maintenance project.

“If you do not have a passport or a federal ID, you’re not getting into that plant.  If you only have a Missouri driver’s license, you’re not getting into that plant.”

A delay for the legislation would be ironic, given that Senator Ryan Silvey (R-Kansas City) pre-filed a REAL ID bill before the current session began. It would allow Missourians to choose if they want the identification by requiring the Department of Revenue to create a REAL ID-compliant license and a non-compliant ID to offer to residents.

(Missourinet) – On this Missouri Vietnam Veterans Day, the state House plans to consider a resolution that would urge a military agency to resolve the cases of 15 missing Vietnam War soldiers from Missouri.

Lieutenant Governor Mike Parson (R) tells Missourinet the state’s heroes are not forgotten.

“When you go into a combat situation or you go into a non-combat situation, guys around you are never from your home state. They’re just soldiers,” says Parson. “Leaving one of them doesn’t matter where you’re from. They all deserve to come home.

The Missourians who are unaccounted for include:

Paul Hasenbeck, Bernard Plassmeyer, Steven Neil Bezold, Donald Martin Cramer, William R. Edmondson, Dickie W. Finley, Frederick W. Hess Jr., Charles W. Marik, Carl D. Miller, Dayton W. Ragland, Dwight G. Rickman, Robert P. Rosenback, John W. Seuell, George Craig Smith and Randolph B. Suber.

“I think as a veteran, it’s something that touches you,” says Parson. “You think 15 out of 6 million people doesn’t sound like very many to the average person, but if you add that 15 to somebody’s family, it’s a big deal.”

Parson worked for the Army’s criminal investigation division and is a former Polk County sheriff.

“Just like anything, sometimes you can quit right before you could have discovered something. I’m a big fan of pushing everybody that says hey – we’ve got to make sure you’ve done everything you could do. We see from time to time there is new information out there. There’s new things that pop up from time to time. It’s no different from working a homicide case, a cold case as we call them in law enforcement. Sometimes a different set of eyes, somebody else to view the case, you find something that’s unique. We’ve seen a lot of success for that on the criminal side.”

Parson says there are about 2,300 missing U.S. soldiers who served in some of America’s wars.

“I don’t know that any one conflict is more important than the other. One might have got more publicity. You know how our country reacted to the Vietnam era versus other times,” says Parson. “I think it should really be the thing where we take a look at all soldiers and try to bring them home.”

On Thursday, the state House will honor more than 80 Missourians who served their country.

(Missourinet) – After a marathon debate at the Statehouse in Jefferson City, the Missouri House approved prescription drug monitoring program legislation on Wednesday.

The House approved State Rep. Holly Rehder’s (R-Sikeston) legislation, following a three-hour debate.

Rehder tells Missourinet she believes her bill will be given final approval Thursday in the House. It would then go to the Missouri Senate.

Rehder tells her House colleagues that prescription drug abuse is one of the fastest-growing epidemics in the nation.

“Last year the babies born with opiates on Medicaid, the cost was $23 million,” Rehder said on the House floor.

Missouri is currently the only state in the nation without a prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP), which is an electronic database that collects data on controlled substance prescriptions within a state.

The House approved Rehder’s bill in a voice vote.

She told the House that the bill will give prescribers a tool to find and address abuses.

“The most important part of this bill is getting to the root of this addiction, and that’s allowing the physicians to be able to see it on the front end and help a patient get back down to a healthier lifestyle,” Rehder said.

Critics of the bill include State Rep. Justin Hill (R-Lake St. Louis), a former St. Charles County undercover detective.

“We are addressing a problem with the wrong answer,” Hill told House colleagues. “The problem are the drug dealers, and they are physicians. It never helps to go after the user.”

Hill says a database won’t work.

Veteran State Rep. Jay Barnes (R-Jefferson City) also questions the bill. He unsuccessfully offered an amendment to establish a voluntary list of addicts or former addicts, patterned after the “casino gambling list.”

“It is nearly identical to the existing program we have for casinos’ gambling list that works, and I think it would work in this realm,” Barnes said.

Rehder asked everyone in the House on Wednesday who supported her bill to vote against Barnes’ amendment, which was then rejected 86 to 68.

The Sikeston Republican says 6,000 children were removed from substance abuse homes in Missouri last year, adding that emergency room visits for opioids by Missouri Medicaid patients increased more than 400 percent last year.

Bill opponents say there is no proof that the bill will stop illegal prescriptions. Some opponents also say the PDMP would violate citizens’ Fourth Amendment rights with no positive outcome.

The Missouri Hospital Association, Missouri Nurses Association, Missouri Pharmacy Association, the Missouri Grocers Association, Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Missouri Police Chiefs Association and the Missouri State Troopers Association were among those who testified this year for the Rehder bill.

(Missourinet) – As Missouri Lawmakers cobble together a budget to deal with a shortage of funding, they appear to be receptive to lending more financial support to the state’s cash strapped public defender system.

The House Budget Committee allocated the agency an additional $6.8 million Tuesday night from what Governor Eric Greitens had proposed in his budget.  The money would come from funding originally intended for the Attorney General’s office.

Department director Michael Barrett submitted a request for $70 million in late February to cover costs in the upcoming fiscal year.

Republican House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick of Shell Knob notes the figure reflects the best case scenario for the Agency.

“I think he knows that that’s not realistic,” said Fitzpatrick. “It’s based on a study that they had done that shows what an acceptable case load was, and things like that.”

The public defender caseload has increased 12 percent since 2014, from 74,000 to 82,000.  The agency has about 580 employees, including roughly 350 attorneys.

Director Barrett recently told lawmakers the lion’s share of a $4.5 million increase in funding last year was withheld because of a budget shortfall.

This year, Governor Greitens is calling for $572 million in budget cuts starting in July to deal to with under-performing revenues.  He’s allocated $43.6 million for the Public Defender System, which is less than half of what Director Barrett had sought.

Fitzpatrick says the agency will likely get more money, but it’ll be limited by financial constraints.

“We’re not in a position, in a year when we’re cutting over a half billion dollars in the budget, to double the amount of money we’re spending on the public defender. But even though we’re are cutting a lot of things out of the budget, one of things we are increasing is the public defender’s budget.”

After meeting to discuss the agency’s financial situation, Fitzpatrick says he and Barrett came to an agreement that a $2 million increase in funding would satisfy the most pressing needs.

“I understand the challenges he has in his office. We talked about what a solution to getting him on better footing would be. He and I both agreed that another $2 million over what the governor had recommended would help him resolve a lot of problems in his office.”

The call for increased funding for the Public Defender System reached the courts earlier this month when a class action lawsuit was filed by a group led by the American Civil Liberties Union.

The suit says the public defenders budget is “shockingly inadequate,” paying only $356 per case, which ranks Missouri 49th out of 50 states in per capita spending.

According to ranking House Budget Committee Democrat Michael Butler of St. Louis, judges have also created problems for the agency. He says judges have caused backlogs by making public defenders wait in court for hours before cases are heard.

(Missourinet) – An investigation is underway by a U.S. Senate committee to determine whether pharmaceutical manufacturers have contributed to opioid drug overuse and overprescribing.

Senator Claire McCaskill is the ranking Democrat on the committee.

“This killer is not picky. I mean, this is happening in affluent suburbs, it’s happening in rural communities. It’s happening to farm families, it’s happening with families all over our state—where someone has began taking an opioid prescription drug, and then, because heroin is cheaper, they’ve moved onto heroin and then they can’t determine the dosage they’re getting and they end up dead,” says McCaskill.

The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s investigation will include the manufacturers of America’s top five opioid products based on 2015 sales. In letters to the heads of Purdue, Janssen/Johnson & Johnson, Insys, Mylan, and Depomed, McCaskill requested:

· Documents showing internal estimates of the risk of misuse, abuse, addiction, overdose, diversion or death arising from the use of any opioid product or estimates of these risks produced by third-party contractors or vendors.

· Reports generated within the last five years summarizing or concerning compliance audits of sales and marketing policies.

· Marketing and business plans, including plans for direct-to-consumer and physician marketing, developed during the last five years.

· Quotas for sales representatives dedicated to opioid products concerning the recruitment of physicians for speakers programs during the last five years.

· Contributions to a variety of third party advocacy organizations.

· Any reports issued to government agencies during the last five years in accordance with corporate integrity agreements or other settlement agreements.

“We’ve got to figure out how we allowed these pain prescriptions to flood the markets. That begins with the distributors and the manufacturers. You can actually sometimes get a lot more done with an aggressive investigation, with good oversight,” says McCaskill.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deaths from opioids, including prescription opioids and heroin, reached more than 30,000 in 2015, and sales of prescription opioids have quadrupled since 1999.

“I think we can change this country for the better when it comes to this killer, the heroin overdoses, the opioid prescription addiction, by doing the kind of investigation that will hold some people accountable that were trying to make a lot of money off a product that was being overprescribed and eventually causing death,” says McCaskill.

The state House is expected to debate this week, Sikeston Republican state Rep. Holly Rehder’s bill that would create a statewide prescription drug monitoring system. McCaskill supports Rehder’s legislation.

“Representative Rehder’s plan will make a real difference in saving Missouri lives, and I urge state leaders to follow her leadership and do the right thing,” says McCaskill. “We’re finally seeing movement in Jefferson City to crack down on prescription drug shoppers who are fueling the heroin epidemic—and I hope the Legislature will act on it, rather than the half-measure designed to allow folks to say they did something while really allowing this cancer to continue festering in our communities.”

Missouri is the only state in the nation without a prescription drug monitoring program, to look for cases of opioid misuse.

(Missourinet) – The Missouri Senate could vote soon on a proposal to boost online privacy.

Under the bill, employers, schools and landlords could not require that they have access to usernames or passwords of a personal online account.

Republican Senator Caleb Rowden of Columbia, who’s sponsoring the measure, says it prevents unwarranted intrusion into people’s lives.

“You know, when you are talking about hiring practices, buying or renting homes, those sorts of things,” said Rowden.  “It just keeps things that are meant to be private, it keeps them private.”

The bill also prohibits employers, schools and landlords from refusing to hire, admit or rent to any person who declines to disclose a password or username. Rowden says it separates illicit probes from inquiries made in good faith.

“I think when you’re asking for passwords, in some cases and what that means, I think that’s a completely different conversation. I think we just want to make sure that those two things are separated in law.”

Employers, schools and landlords that inadvertently acquire personal online information would be required to discard it. The measure also bars employers, schools and landlords from taking retaliatory action against people who refuse to share their passwords or usernames.

But Rowden says appropriate information would still be for available for those who are performing warranted backgrounds checks.

“If it’s within the bounds of life for employers to look at social media profiles and whatever you can glean from public information, that is certainly acceptable.”

A growing number of states have adopted laws to block unwarranted intrusions into private online information over the past five or six years.

Maryland passed the first such ban on employer access to information such as passwords and usernames in 2012.  It launched a movement of states to enact “anti-snooping” laws as social media exploded in popularity.

Rowden’s measure is similar in concept to proposals in the legislature dating back to 2010.

A bill in the Missouri House this year adds protection for students in elementary and secondary public and private schools regarding their passwords and social media accounts.  It’s received a hearing, but has yet to be voted on in committee.

Rowden’s bill is on the formal calendar in the Senate, which means it could be debated on the chamber’s floor at any time before the legislative session ends.

(Missourinet) – A significant gap exists between rural and urban areas when using health information technology at nursing homes, according to a University of Missouri study.

Author Greg Alexander says some evidence shows that technology can enhance the quality, safety and efficiency of care at these facilities.

“In rural locations, where they have fewer technologies for clinical support, they rely on traditional methods which are paper-based methods, phone calls and faxes, which are typically slower. They are prone to more error,” says Alexander. “The facilities that have good highly-sophisticated technologies with clinical support, their infection rates are better.”

Alexander found some rural nursing homes are using creative and highly unsophisticated solutions to help optimize care for patients. For example, pictures were placed on a patient’s door to communicate a certain message about the patient.

“Building those kinds of solutions into an electronic system might be really a cool way to develop systems,” says Alexander.

He says lawmakers must be aware of the challenges facing rural health organizations and provide incentives to help rural nursing homes improve their technology.

“All incentives are for acute care. They’re for physicians, ambulatory care and those kinds of places. Long-term care doesn’t have those types of incentives. So the resources that are being put toward those places are less,” says Alexander. “The people that are in those long-term care facilities deserve to have the best care available and the best resources, like anyone else.”

Alexander recommends ongoing assessment of health care technology.

“Long-term care is a space where there’s a great majority of our older people and even some younger people reside for long periods of time. So we need to make the quality of care in those facilities better,” says Alexander.

His study is the first national one about nursing home IT use since 2004.