In light of reports that two employees at the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Mo. admitted to dumping, destroying, or misfiling at least 1,800 documents held by U.S. veterans, U.S. Senators Roy Blunt (Mo.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.) sent a letter today expressing their concerns for the veterans’ surviving family members who have been affected by this potentially harmful breach of their personal information.

According to the St. Louis Post Dispatch, “Court documents in the unemployment case say some employees, seeking to earn a bonus, were intentionally ‘stashing’ records to finish more quickly, and that those documents may never be found among the vast holdings.” The Senators requested information on what steps the National Personnel Records Center is taking to prevent such a serious incident from happening again.

“How many surviving family members have been impacted by the release of the names and Social Security numbers, and have they been advised of the breach? Have their benefits been impacted by this incident in any way?” the Senators wrote. “What policy changes have been recommended or implemented as a result of this breach of personal information?”

(AP)  An Oklahoma man was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his role in the murder of a Joplin man last year.
Eighteen-year-old Marcus Stephens, of Tulsa, Okla., is the first of five people charged in the July death of 23-year-old Jacob Wages at his Joplin home.

Prosecutors say the suspects broke into Wages’ home because they mistakenly believed he had $5,000 and a pound of Ecstasy pills.

Stephens pleaded guilty in November to second-degree murder and agreed to testify against 18-year-old Daniel Hartman, who prosecutors say shot Wages. Hartman was convicted last week of second-degree murder.
A psychiatrist testified before the sentencing that Stephens suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder because he lived a violent life with little structure.

— U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius was in Kansas City on Monday urging the uninsured to enroll for coverage on the federal health exchange.

She acknowledged the troubled start of the federal marketplace website, healthcare.gov, but said significant improvements have been made. She described a “surge” of enrollment since the end of November, after the website was fixed.

“People, if they had an early experience, should come back to the site because we’re enrolling thousands of people every day,” Sebelius said.

The former Kansas governor held a press conference at the Full Employment Council near 18th and Vine.

She touted the benefits of the health exchange for both the uninsured and for the metro area.

About 250,000 people in the Kansas City metro area lack health insurance and are eligible to enroll for coverage through the new insurance marketplace, she said. And about 80 percent of them would qualify for subsidies to help pay for insurance.

She said people could enroll using a 24/7 phone hotline; by mail; or in-person with a local navigator, certified application counselor, agent or broker.

The latest numbers from the Centers for Medicare and Medicare show that 7,475 people in Kansas and 33,138 people in Missouri had enrolled in insurance plans on the exchange as of Dec. 28, 2013.

Sebelius introduced to the crowd local business owner Lynn Gardner Hinkle, who had recently enrolled for insurance. Hinkle said she had twice undergone surgery to treat melanoma and had been ineligible for private insurance before the Affordable Care Act barred insurance companies from excluding from coverage those with pre-existing medical conditions.

“I am basically so happy to shout from the rooftops, ‘If you are not insured, get on the website!’” Hinkle said.

Sebelius was introduced by Kansas City, Mo. Mayor Sly James, who voiced his support for the Affordable Care Act. He described the law as “not perfect” but brushed aside problems with the website.

“If salvation arrives in a broken-down jalopy, it’s still salvation,” he said.

Also at the event, Healthcare Foundation of Greater Kansas City Chief Executive Bridget McCandless announced Cover KC, a new city-wide program to help the uninsured enroll.

Cover KC will include door-to-door canvassing, a website, phone hotline, as well as mail and social media components. McCandless said Cover KC would try to reach every household with an uninsured person. She anticipated the effort would involve 200,000 mailings, 70,000 home visits, and 270,000 phone calls.

Cover KC is a collaboration of public and private groups as well as the offices of Mayor James and Kansas City, Kan. Mayor Mark Holland.

“This is about changing the conversation for people to really examine what their personal health responsibilities and opportunities are,” McCandless said.

Sebelius said Kansas and Missouri should expand their Medicaid programs, as prescribed by the Affordable Care Act. She emphasized the federal funding that would come to the states, if they did.

“Five million dollars in federal assistance is lost every single day – that started Jan. 1 – every single day Missouri is losing $5 million which could pay 100 percent of the cost of those who are uninsured and eligible for Medicaid expansion,” Sebelius said.

She said Kansas was missing out on $1.5 million a day.

Under the Affordable Care ACT, The federal government obliged to pay 100 percent of the costs of Medicaid expansion for states until 2017. After that, the federal funding tapers down gradually to 90 percent of expansion costs.

(AP) — Missouri senators would be responsible for trying all impeachments of elected state officials under a proposed constitutional amendment.

Under current law, most officials are impeached by the House and then tried by the Missouri Supreme Court. Impeachments of a governor and Supreme Court judges are tried by a panel of “eminent jurists.”

The measure reviewed Monday by the Senate Judiciary Committee would give the Senate the power to try all impeachments. Sponsoring Republican Sen. Ed Emery, of Lamar, said the change would put Missouri in line with the federal government and most other states.

Then-Secretary of State Judy Moriarty was the last official to be impeached. She was convicted and removed from office in 1994 for backdating her son’s candidate filing application.

 (AP) — The number of people receiving autism services covered by insurance has risen significantly under a still relatively new Missouri law.

The state insurance department says insurers paid for 3,070 people to receive autism services last year, an increase of 22 percent from 2012. The claims totaled $8.2 million, up nearly 27 percent from the prior year.

A 2010 Missouri law requires health insurance companies to cover specific autism therapies, including what’s known as “applied behavioral analysis.”

(AP) – A new report released Tuesday shows that a nationwide push by prosecutors to re-examine possible wrongful convictions contributed to a record number of exonerations in 2013.

The National Registry of Exonerations says 87 people falsely convicted of crimes were exonerated last year. The joint effort by the Northwestern University and University of Michigan law schools shows that nearly 40 percent of those exonerations were initiated either by law enforcement or included police and prosecutors’ cooperation.

Texas topped the state-by-state breakdown with 13 exonerations in 2013, followed by Illinois, New York, Washington and California.

District attorneys in the counties containing Dallas, Chicago, Brooklyn, Manhattan and Santa Clara, California, are among those with new “conviction integrity” units. The International Association of Chiefs of Police also is pushing to reduce wrongful convictions.

 (AP) – An Oklahoma compounding pharmacy linked to Missouri’s new lethal injection drug is now seeking a license to do business in the neighboring state.

The Apothecary Shoppe of Tulsa requested licensure in both Missouri and Texas in a Jan. 13 letter to the Oklahoma State Board of Pharmacy.

Missouri laws allow the state to keep the identity of its execution drug supplier confidential, but both the public radio station and attorneys for a Missouri man put to death last week say they have used public records to identify the Oklahoma pharmacy as the supplier.

An Apothecary Shoppes spokeswoman told The Associated Press the licensing request was related to a business restructuring. She declined to discuss the company’s possible role in Missouri executions.