FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — A Texan has been diagnosed with measles after attending a softball tournament in Kansas where health officials later warned of possible exposure to the virus.

Tarrant County Public Health officials in Fort Worth on Wednesday announced a resident tested positive for measles after traveling outside Texas.

Texas Department of State Health Services spokeswoman Christine Mann says the person attended a July Fourth weekend softball tournament in Wichita, Kansas. Officials from both health agencies declined to release further details on the individual.

Health officials on July 17 announced more than 30 people from Texas who traveled to the tournament may have been exposed to the measles virus. At least three recreational softball teams from Texas played in Wichita.

Measles is a highly contagious respiratory illness that spreads through coughing and sneezing.

PITTSBURG, Kan. (AP) — A proposal to build a technical education center in Pittsburg that would serve southeast Kansas has received a boost.

The Pittsburg City Commission on Tuesday approved appropriating $300,000 in economic development loan funds for the center, which would offer education and training to high school, community college and adult students while also providing workforce training for southeast Kansas businesses.

The vote came after more than two years of discussion about the center, which will cost an estimated $1.3 million. The Bicknell Family Foundation has donated $1 million to help buy a building and 18 acres.

The Pittsburg Morning-Sun reports a building in the Pittsburg Industrial Park that is currently used by Fort Scott Community College will house the center, with an expansion to allow additional programs.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minneapolis man and his two children were asked to leave a Southwest Airlines flight in Denver after he tweeted about a boarding disagreement.

Duff Watson says he has priority boarding because of his “A-List” customer status. But a gate agent didn’t allow his two children, ages 6 and 9, to board with him Sunday on a flight to Minneapolis.

WCCO-TV reports Watson says he tweeted that the gate agent was rude and that his family was asked to leave the plane after reaching their seats.

Watson says the agent felt threatened and that his family could not return to the plane until he deleted his tweet.

The family was eventually allowed to re-board. Southwest said in a statement that it is reviewing the matter.

___

SPRINGFIELD (AP) – A southwest Missouri sheriff has been indicted by a federal grand jury on allegations that he stole property recovered in criminal cases and sold a stolen firearm.

U.S. Attorney Tammy Dickinson says in a news release Tuesday that 46-year-old Ronald Snodgrass of El Dorado was charged in a three-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Springfield. Snodgrass was St. Clair County sheriff from January 2001 to December 2012 before losing a bid for re-election.

The indictment alleges Snodgrass stole a riding mower and a Polaris Ranger UTV, as well as selling a rifle that he knew had been stolen. Dickinson says the former sheriff “treated the county’s evidence room like his personal tool shed.”

It was not immediately clear if Snodgrass has an attorney.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Democrat Chad Taylor has disclosed raising $127,000 through June for his U.S. Senate campaign in Kansas.

A report filed by Taylor’s campaign with federal regulators shows about $42,000 of Taylor’s cash contributions came from April through June. Most of Taylor’s funds are from individuals.

Taylor’s campaign also disclosed spending $116,000 since forming his campaign in November, most of it from April through June. He ended June with less than $11,000 in cash.

Taylor is the Shawnee County district attorney, and he’s running for the seat held by three-term Republican Pat Roberts.

Taylor faces Lawrence attorney Patrick Wiesner in the Democratic primary. A finance report for Wiesner was not available online.

Roberts faces tea party challenger Milton Wolf and two other lesser-known candidates in the Aug. 5 GOP primary.

 

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas’ medical board is investigating U.S. Senate candidate Milton Wolf’s posting of X-ray images of fatal gunshot wounds and other medical injuries on a personal Facebook page.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports it received a letter from a State Board of Healing Arts attorney disclosing the investigation and asking it to share copies of the images and Facebook commentary from Wolf in its possession. The newspaper first reported Wolf’s postings in February.

Wolf is a Leawood radiologist seeking to unseat three-term U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts in the Republican primary. Wolf campaign spokesman Ben Hartman blamed politically motivated allegations for the investigation.

Wolf acknowledged posting the images several years ago, along with dark-humor commentary. He has apologized.

The letter from board disciplinary counselor Dan Riley was dated July 14.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress will hear testimony Wednesday detailing how undercover investigators used fake identities to get taxpayer-subsidized health insurance under President Barack Obama’s law.

The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says its undercover operatives were able to get subsidized health care in 11 out of 18 attempts. The GAO is still paying premiums for the policies, even as the Obama administration attempts to verify phony documentation.

The GAO will deliver its findings at a House Ways and Means Committee hearing. An advance copy of the agency’s testimony was provided to The Associated Press.

The administration says it will review the testimony carefully and work with GAO to strengthen safeguards.

By Jim McLean
KHI News Service
TOPEKA — Conflicting federal court rulings are raising questions about whether consumers in Kansas and Missouri will continue to be eligible for subsidies when purchasing private health insurance through the Obamacare marketplace.
A three-member panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said Tuesday that only consumers purchasing coverage through state-operated marketplaces are eligible for federal tax credits.

If the 2-to-1 ruling stands, consumers in the 36 states – including Kansas and Missouri – that didn’t establish their own marketplaces would no longer be eligible for subsidies. On average, the subsidies have lowered the cost of premiums by 76 percent for those who purchased coverage in the federal marketplace.

However, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., issued a ruling a few hours after the D.C. court upholding the Internal Revenue Service rule that permitted subsidies in the federal marketplace.

Obama administration officials took issue with the D.C. panel’s ruling and said they would seek to have it reviewed by all of the judges on the court.

Officials in Kansas and Missouri decided against establishing state-based marketplaces. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback blocked Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger’s efforts to create one, forcing and her to return a $31.5 million federal grant in the process.
As a result, consumers in both states seeking ACA coverage could only use the federal marketplace, which was plagued by technical problems for months after the start of the open enrollment period.

Of the approximately 57,000 Kansans who purchased Obamacare coverage from October 2013 through March of this year, 78 percent received subsidies. In Missouri, 85 percent of the more than 152,000 consumers used subsidies to help them purchase coverage in the federal marketplace.

Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, a Republican who has broken ranks with many in her party to support the health reform law, said she’s hopeful the full D.C. circuit court will overturn the panel’s ruling. But if the ruling stands, Praeger said, it would put the cost of coverage out of reach for many who were recently able to purchase it for the first time.

“If it is overturned, the irony of it is and the unfairness of it all would be that states that did their own exchange would get the subsidies and states like Kansas wouldn’t. And that’s inherently unfair,” she said. “But it would be something we brought on ourselves by not doing our own exchange.”

Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt submitted briefs in support of the plaintiffs in both cases. The small businesses that filed the lawsuit that resulted in the D.C. court ruling included the Community National Bank based in Seneca.

Schmidt, a Republican who has intervened in several challenges to the ACA, said the IRS ruling that permitted subsidies in the federal marketplace, or exchange, conflicted with the language of the law.

“Congress might not have expected so many states to decline to establish an exchange under the Affordable Care Act, but that misjudgment cannot justify allowing the IRS to effectively rewrite the statute to satisfy policy and political objectives,” Schmidt said.

Robert St. Peter, chief executive of the Kansas Health Institute, the parent organization of the editorially independent KHI News Service, said the entire law could be made unworkable if the ruling prohibiting subsidies in the federal exchange was upheld.

“It’s hard to imagine a workaround to this decision if it stands,” St. Peter said, suggesting it would undermine the mandates that require individuals to purchase coverage and employers to offer it.

“Employer penalties only kick in if employees obtain a subsidy on the exchange,” he said. “If there are no subsidies, there’s no trigger for the mandate on the employer side. On the individual side, it’s the affordability test. You’ve got to have access to affordable insurance. So without subsidies, the individual mandate is essentially meaningless.”

The loss of subsidies also would exclude many younger, healthier people from the insurance pool, said Sheldon Weisgrau, director of the Health Reform Resource Project in Kansas.

“What likely would happen is that the sickest people with chronic illnesses who really need the insurance will be more likely to figure out some way to scrape together enough money to buy it,” Weisgrau said. “Those who drop out of the market would be those who are relatively healthier. And that could be devastating for the insurance industry as a whole.”