JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) — A dispute between Gov. Jay Nixon and the Missouri Legislature is causing some financial pain for libraries in the state, particularly in small or rural areas.
Citing a potential revenue loss from the sales tax cuts, Nixon vetoed or withheld more than $1 billion of the Legislature’s $27 billion budget. The withholdings include more than $6.6 million budgeted for the state’s public libraries, The Joplin Globe reported .
That loss is being felt at smaller libraries. For example, the withholding of about $20,000 is 4 percent of the Carthage Public Library’s budget.
Library director Julie Yockey says the loss of funds could cause reductions in book buys and programming, and might force fewer hours or closures if it continues for more than a year.
WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — It’s grape harvest time in Kansas, and the state’s growing wine industry is expecting a big crop this year.
The Kansas Grape Growers & Winemakers Association says the state has 35 registered wineries and vineyards. Most are small, with two to five acres of grapes, rather than large-scale farms. Nearly all of them are in eastern Kansas.
The Wichita Eagle reports the state’s climate doesn’t allow wineries to grow well known grapes such as Cabernet or Merlot. Instead, they grow hybrids that include part of the heartier native American grapes.
Winemakers produced 107,000 gallons of wine worth $6.9 million in 2010, the last official count. Wine experts say this year’s production is likely to be much higher, thanks to a strong harvest of grapes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration has approved the first screening test for colon cancer that uses patient DNA to help spot potentially deadly tumors and growths.
The Cologuard test from Exact Sciences detects irregular mutations in a patient’s stool sample that can be an early warning sign of cancer. Patients who test positive for the mutations should undergo a colonoscopy to confirm the results.
Doctors have long used stool tests to look for hidden blood that can be a warning sign of tumors and precancerous polyps.
But company studies of Cologuard showed that it was more accurate at detecting cancerous tumors and worrisome polyps than traditional stool blood tests. The new test was less accurate at correctly ruling out cancer, as it reported more growths when none were actually present.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City officials say a church that partially collapsed with children inside must be demolished.
Walls at the Rios De Agua Viva Church in northeast Kansas City collapsed Aug. 7. All 64 people inside, including children in a daycare, escaped without injury.
The city has determined the rest of the three-story building must be demolished because structural engineers found that it was unsafe. No date for the demolition has been set.
KCTV5 reports some churchgoers had hoped the church would be rebuilt, but the cost is estimated at $2 million. The building was insured and the church is planning to move to Kansas City, Kansas.
The son of a North Carolina-based missionary says his mother is doing well as she’s being treated for the Ebola virus in an Atlanta hospital.
Jeremy Writebol, who lives in Wichita, told NBC’s “Today” show in an interview broadcast Tuesday that Nancy Writenbol’s eyes are getting brighter and she’s even joking a little.
Jeremy Writebol said he had been concerned his mother might not make it when she was taken out of an ambulance at Emory University’s hospital last week after being flown from Liberia. A second American, Dr. Kent Brantly, had been able to walk from the ambulance into the hospital.
Writebol said doctors have said they expect her to recover, though they haven’t elaborated. He also said he wouldn’t be surprised if his parents want to return to Liberia after she recovers.
MANHATTAN, Kan. (AP) — The Sierra Club in Kansas says state health officials and Kansas State University removed an ozone pollution monitoring site near Manhattan to prevent data collection that might support federal limits on Flint Hill grassland burns.
State health officials dispute that charge, saying the device 10 miles from Manhattan was unplugged because the equipment was more suitable for evaluating pollution in population centers.
The Topeka Capital-Journal reports Kansas State did not respond to request for comment.
Air-quality equipment at the Konza Prairie was unplugged in April 2013, just before burn season. The gear had collected ozone information for more than a decade. The nearest of Kansas’ nine remaining ozone monitors is in Topeka.
A report that said Kansas was the only state in the nation to see a significant increase in its uninsured rate appears to be “a statistical anomaly,” as enrollment in Medicaid and private insurance is up for the first half of 2014.
By Jim McLean
KHI News Service
TOPEKA — Remember that headline-grabbing report last week that said Kansas was the only state in the nation to see a significant increase in its uninsured rate?
Well, it’s looking more and more suspect.
Some officials were immediately skeptical when the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index survey results were released, showing that the adult uninsured rate in Kansas had increased by 5.1 percentage points, jumping from 12.5 percent in 2013 to 17.6 percent by mid-year 2014.
Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger was among the doubters. She said the number appeared to be “an anomaly” because a spike of that magnitude from one year to the next “would be unprecedented.”
But others seized on the numbers to score political points. Some said Kansas’ decision to join 23 other states in not expanding Medicaid contributed to the increase. Others said the number was evidence that the Affordable Care Act was failing to achieve its primary goal of reducing the number of uninsured – if only in Kansas.
But upon closer inspection, neither contention appears to be the case.
Increases not decreases
Even though Kansas didn’t expand Medicaid eligibility, enrollment is up significantly over last year because of something known as the woodwork effect. Increased attention to health insurance issues, due to the ACA, has caught the attention of people who already were eligible for the program and prompted them to enroll.
Approximately 426,000 Kansans are enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) – together known as KanCare, the state’s managed care program – up from just under 399,000 in July 2013, according to state officials. About half of Kansas Medicaid enrollees are children, including more than 56,000 in CHIP.
“Since Medicaid enrollment is increasing at a steady pace, if there is an increase in the number of uninsured it would have to be driven by other factors,” said Kari Bruffett, secretary of the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services. Bruffett previously oversaw KanCare as director of the Health Care Finance
Kari Bruffett, former director of the Division of Health Care Finance, now serves as secretary of the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services.- photo KHI News
Division at the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
If Medicaid enrollment is up, only a sharp drop in the number of Kansans with private coverage could explain the reported increase in the uninsured rate. But there has been no such drop, said Mary Beth Chambers, a spokesperson for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, the state’s largest health insurer.
“With all due respect to the researchers, our enrollment numbers in both our group and individual lines of business have grown in the first six months of 2014,” Chambers said in an email to KHI News Service. “Based on our numbers, and figures we have seen in various other reports, we would have anticipated a decrease in the uninsured rate for Kansas.”
That leaves some sort of methodological or sampling error as the most likely explanation, said Scott Brunner, a senior analyst at the Kansas Health Institute, a nonpartisan policy and research organization that also houses the editorially independent KHI News Service.
Brunner said the Gallup results “look more like a statistical anomaly than anything that’s actually happening.”
When KHI analysts sought an explanation from Gallup researchers, they also were scratching their heads, Brunner said.
“It puzzled them as well,” he said. “They didn’t have a good explanation for why Kansas would be so different.”
The uninsured rate reported by Gallup was based on a single question in a survey designed to measure several indicators of health and well-being. The sampling error for the 2013 survey ranged to as high as 3.5 points for smaller population states. For the midyear 2014 results, the error range was as high as plus or minus 5 points for the smaller states.
An annual survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau includes a more extensive battery of health insurance questions and produces what most researchers and government agencies consider a more authoritative estimate.
But lag time is a problem. The latest survey available, for 2012, shows that 12.6 percent of Kansans were uninsured. The extent to which the ACA and Medicaid expansion have reduced that rate won’t start to be reflected in the Census Bureau data until 2015.
Expansion states doing better
In the meantime, one thing does seem clear from recent surveys: The biggest reductions in uninsured rates have occurred in states that expanded Medicaid and played a role in establishing their online insurance marketplaces.
That was the conclusion of the Gallup survey and one conductedrecently by the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington, D.C.
The report detailing the Urban Institute’s findings said: “The uninsurance rate for adults in the states that adopted the ACA’s Medicaid expansion dropped 6.1 percentage points since September 2013, compared with a drop of 1.7 percentage points for the nonexpansion states. This represents a decline in the uninsurance rate of 37.7 percent in the expansion states, as compared to only 9 percent in the nonexpansion states.”
In Kansas, Medicaid enrollment has increased in the last year by about 27,000. That number is dwarfed by the estimated 151,000 adult Kansans who would be likely to enroll under expansion.
Currently in Kansas, able-bodied adults without children can’t qualify for Medicaid. Adults with children are eligible only if they earn less than 32 percent of the poverty level annually – about $3,730 for an individual and $7,630 for a family of four.
Expansion would make all Kansas adults earning up to 138 percent of the poverty level – annually about $16,100 for an individual and $32,900 for a family of four – eligible for the health care program.
LEXINGTON- Two teenagers were injured in an accident at 8 p.m. on Monday in Lafayette County.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 1999 Chevy Blazer driven by Colin L. Eber, 19, Higginsville, was northbound on Highway T. The driver failed to negotiate a left hand curve, went off the right side of the road. The driver overcorrected and the vehicle went into the ditch and overturned.
Eber and a passenger in the Blazer Thomas A. Grinage, 19, Warrensburg, were transported to Lafayette County Regional Hospital.
The MSHP reported they were properly restrained at the time of the accident.
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is holding rallies in three Kansas cities to outline the platform for his re-election campaign.
Tuesday’s events in Overland Park, Topeka and Wichita were described as the unveiling of what Brownback’s campaign is calling “Road Map 2.0.”
The campaign did not disclose details beforehand, but in seeking his first in 2010, Brownback outlined a set of goals and called it the “Road Map for Kansas.”
Those goals included increasing the state’s per-person net personal income, boosting private-sector employment, and improving fourth-graders’ scores on standardized reading tests. His other goals were making sure more high school graduates were ready for college and reducing the percentage of children living in poverty.
Brownback is facing a tougher-than-expected race against Democratic challenger Paul Davis.
OZARK (AP) — A 21-year-old man has pleaded not guilty in last week’s fatal stabbing of southwest Missouri high school student.
KOLR-TV reports Jesus Padilla, of Nixa, was arraigned Monday on charges of second-degree murder and armed criminal action.
Padilla’s court appearance came one day after hundreds of people attended a vigil for 15-year-old Joey Phillips-Clay, also of Nixa.
Phillips-Clay was stabbed in the throat last Thursday at a Nixa apartment complex. Investigators and family members said it happened when Phillips-Clay tried to step in as his half brother was arguing with Padilla.
Phillips-Clay would have started his sophomore year at Nixa High School this week.
