JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A proposed truce in the Kansas City business battle between Missouri and Kansas has gained another endorsement in Missouri.

The state House voted 151-3 Tuesday to pass a bill that would stop offering incentives for businesses to move from any of four Kansas counties to any of four Missouri counties in the Kansas City region. The Missouri Senate passed a similar measure last week.

The two states have together waived hundreds of millions of dollars of tax revenues in recent years by offering specialized incentives for businesses to relocate across the state line.

For the proposed truce to take effect, both Missouri chambers must pass an identical bill and have it signed by Gov. Jay Nixon. The Kansas Legislature or governor also must enact a similar measure.

Manhattan—Pottawatomie County Sheriff Greg Riat
 has released details on the identity of the body located in the water at Tuttle Creek Lake last Friday, February 28.

The body has been identified as 56-year-old Jane Peterson of rural St.George. She worked in the physics department at Kansas State University.

Family members had reported her as a missing person on January 19th 2014.

The Sheriff’s Office does not suspect foul play in this incident. The cause of death identified by the pathologist in this matter was drowning and hypothermia.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — President Barack Obama is proposing Congress provide another infusion of cash to continue construction of a new biosecurity lab in Kansas.

The president’s budget was announced Tuesday and includes $300 million for the Department of Homeland Security to continue work on the National Bio- and Agro-Defense Facility under construction near Kansas State University.

The $1.25 billion new lab is designed to conduct research on large animals and related diseases to replace an aging facility at Plum Island, N.Y.

Construction began in 2013 on a central utility plant that will provide power and other services for the lab. DHS says construction on the main lab is expected to begin sometime this year, with the beginning operations at a date yet to be announced.

KANSAS CITY, Kan. (AP) — Wyandotte County Democrats have selected a former aide to Unified Government Mayor Joe Reardon as the newest member of the Kansas House of Representatives.

Officials on Monday night elected Pam Curtis to replace Rep. Mike Peterson in the 32nd District.

Peterson died in February after a long illness. He served in the 32nd House district from 1979 to 1990 and was re-elected in 2005.

Curtis was Reardon’s chief of staff. She ran unopposed and was elected by acclimation by six Democratic precinct committee members at a meeting Monday.

Curtis will be sworn in to office after the Legislature returns to work Wednesday, after which she will receive her committee assignments and begin work.

Republicans control the Kansas House with a 92-33 majority over Democrats.

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (AP) — Springfield police say three people are jailed after an investigation into a string of burglaries in which elderly victims who lived alone were threatened in their homes.

The Springfield News-Leader reports police say seven similar burglaries occurred beginning last August, triggering an investigation.

Police say the victims, generally in their 80s and 90s, were threatened with guns and told they would be killed during the burglaries. The suspects sometimes returned to the same home more than once. One woman was injured.

The suspects generally entered the homes by cutting through window screens.

ODESSA, Mo. (AP) — Lafayette County authorities say a 12-year-old boy died after falling through ice into a partially frozen lake.

The body of Devin Fossett was recovered Monday afternoon from Holiday Lake near Odessa.

Odessa Fire Protection District Chief Kevin Campbell says Devin liked to explore the area and left his home Monday with his pellet gun. His father reported him missing when the boy didn’t return home after a few hours.

Campbell believes the boy tried to cross the ice-covered lake and likely fell through the ice. His pellet gun was found on the lake’s shoreline.

Odessa firefighters recovered the boy’s body but were not able to resuscitate him.

Junction City- West bound traffic on I-70 was reduced to one lane for several hours Tuesday morning following an overnight crash.

Two people were injured when a semi truck rolled.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2011 International Semi Truck driven by Courage Gbobo, 29, Orlando, Florida was west bound I-70 at mile post 308 in Geary County at 1:05 a.m.

For an unknown reason the truck entered the median. The Driver attempted to steer the truck back onto the roadway and it overturned and came to rest in the median.

Gbobo was transported to the hospital in Junction City. A passenger in the sleeper berth Madouya Etienne Awidamanossi, 40, Gainesville, Georgia was transported to Stormont Vail in Topeka.

Traffic in the area was still being rerouted at 6:40 a.m.

By Dave Ranney, KHI News Service

PRAIRIE VILLAGE — Unlike Kansas, Missouri requires its state-regulated health insurance plans to offer coverage of autism diagnosis and treatment for children.

That’s why most of the youngsters enrolled at the Kansas City Autism Training Center in Prairie Village, actually live on the Missouri side of the state line, which is about four miles east of here as the crow flies.

“It’s pretty simple, really,” said Ron Johnson, who runs the training center. “In Missouri, insurance covers autism, so families go where the services are. It doesn’t matter that they’re across the line in Kansas.

“Most of the families we see from Kansas are private pay,” he said. “We used to see people taking out second mortgages, or going through their 401(K)s, or borrowing money from friends or family. But for us, that’s kind of gone away because we’re full and because they can just move to Missouri (to get insurance coverage).

“But if you’re not able to do that and if you’re not from a fairly wealthy family, then, chances are you’re desperate,” Johnson said. “.”

No ‘appreciable impact’

Missouri has mandated the coverage for three years. The state insurance department last month issued its annual report on the costs associated with autism coverage and its effect on the state’s insurance market.

According to the report, the numbers of autistic children, ages 0 through 18, who received treatment increased 22 percent last year, from 2,508 in 2012 to 3,070 in 2013. Spending increased almost 27 percent, from $6.5 million in 2012 to $8.2 million in 2013.

Despite the increases, the report cautioned lawmakers against assuming the mandate had created an undue burden on the state’s insurance market.

“While costs associated with autism-related treatment have risen over the prior two years, the fact that these costs represent just two-tenths of one percent of overall claim costs makes it very unlikely that they will have any appreciable impact on insurance premiums,” the report concluded.

The state’s insurers paid out more than $4 billion in total claims last year.

Johnson said he doesn’t understand why Kansas policymakers won’t follow Missouri’s lead on the issue. Missouri is among the 32 states that require their state-regulated health insurance plans to cover treatment and diagnosis of autistic children.

“I’m sitting here in Johnson County, seeing all these families that are doing everything they can to save their kids, and then I see on the news that (legislators) are talking about how hard somebody can spank your kids and whether someone can decide not to serve food to gay people,” he said. “It’s just mind boggling.”

The guinea pig

Since 2011, the Kansas State Employee Health Plan, which covers about 100,000 state and local government workers, their families, and retirees, has been required by state law to cover autism treatments for children. It was implemented as a test of what it might cost to require all state-regulated Kansas plans to offer it.

According to the plan’s administrators, 129 children are getting services through it; 70 of which are age 10 or younger. According to a plan official, the coverage has added about 29 cents per month per member to the plan’s premium costs.

The health plan officials say they are satisfied with the results.

“The Kansas Health Care Commission is pleased with the level of service that it provides to families with autistic children, and I don’t anticipate that it will be making changes to what it provides,” said Jim Clark, secretary of the Kansas Department of Administration and chair of the five-member panel that oversees the plan.

Competing proposals

There are two bills before the Kansas Legislature that would alter the coverage rules for autism in the state, though neither would go as far as Missouri.

Rep. John Rubin was pushing House Bill 2531 with the support of parents of autistic children.

It would allow an estimated 750 children across the state to get coverage, including up to 40 hours per week each for behavior therapies.

“This is the right thing to do,” said Rubin, a Shawnee Republican. “If we can help these kids and their families, we should.”

The other proposal, HB 2704, was supported by the insurance industry. It would limit the coverage to children ages 10 and under and allow them up to 10 hours per week of therapy. It would extend coverage to about 170 children.

The bill was introduced in response to Rubin’s bill, which insurance companies opposed, saying it would drive up health care costs and increase premiums.

“The insurance industry believes that these limits are appropriate in order to provide medically necessary services to Kansas children who need them while also protecting all Kansans from higher premiums and taxes,” Mary Beth Chambers of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas wrote in an email to KHI News Service.

The industry has historically fought mandates to cover treatments not considered medically necessary.

Autism, they say, is a cognitive disorder – not unlike dyslexia – rather than a medical condition.

”The debate about what is a medical service versus what is cognitive therapy has not been fully resolved and remains at the heart of this matter,” Chambers wrote. “Traditionally, health insurance companies do not pay for cognitive therapy for any of their members.”

If they did, she said, it would “significantly increase premiums for all insured people.”

A compromise

Now, according to Rubin, there is a compromise that would meld the two proposals:

It would require large group plans to offer autism coverage starting Jan. 1, 2015. Individual and small-group plans in place prior to the 2011 enactment of the Affordable Care Act would be added to the mandate beginning Jan. 1, 2016.

The coverage currently offered in the state employees’ plan would remain unchanged. But therapy treatment would be limited to 10 hours per week in the plans newly adding the coverage.

House Insurance Committee Chairman Scott Schwab, an Olathe Republican, has agreed to hold a hearing on the compromise measure March 10. And House Speaker Ray Merrick, a Stillwell Republican, has said he wants some sort of autism bill passed this session

Coverage that makes a difference

“The people who run the insurance companies may not think autism is a medical condition,” said Cheryl Richt of Manhattan, the mother of a 14-year-old autistic son. “But there’s a whole team of doctors at the Mayo Clinic that says it is.”

Richt, a music professor at Kansas State University, said her son is covered by the State Employees Health Plan and has shown improvement as a result of the therapies he began receiving at age 11 after lawmakers added the coverage mandate to the state health plan.

“We’ve just gotten to the point where he can put cereal in a bowl,” Richt said. “He can’t quite feed himself like the other kids his age can, but we’re getting there. He’s making progress.”

Before that, caring for the boy was so difficult that he was sent to Lake Mary Center, a school in Miami County for children with severe disabilities.

“He was completely out of control,” Richt said. “We had no one to help us. The school had three people with him, they had him restrained, they had him in a locked room. It was awful. They were as overwhelmed as we were.”

Christopher, her son, spent two years at Lake Mary Center. For most of the second year, he received 50 hours a week of intense, one-on-one behavior therapy.

“Lake Mary saved my family,” Richt said. “Christopher was able to come home.”

Richt and her husband, also a K-State professor, have two other children. She said without the autism insurance coverage, it would cost the family about $8,000 a month to continue the treatments that have allowed him to stay at home.

None of the proposals before the Legislature would affect the large-group, self-insured plans in Kansas with respect to autism coverage. Several already provide it.

Among the company plans that include autism coverage are those operated by Cerner, Garmin, Koch Industries and Children’s Mercy Hospital.

Tricare, the U.S. military’s health insurance plan, also covers autism.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas emergency managers are conducting a statewide tornado drill to prepare residents for the spring storm season and reinforce the need to be prepared.

The drill was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon as part of the state’s severe weather awareness week.

Angee Morgan, of the Kansas Emergency Management Division, says the state had 56 tornadoes last year — the first on April 7 and the last on Aug. 13.

Morgan says residents, schools and businesses are encouraged to use Tuesday’s drill to check procedures for responding to severe weather, including making sure emergency kits are stocked and response plans are in place.