JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri’s attorney general says police should wear body cameras more frequently but that the public and media shouldn’t have unfettered access to the recordings.

Attorney General Chris Koster said in a letter sent to lawmakers Tuesday that concerns about individual privacy made current public records laws unsuitable for widespread use of body cameras.
Requiring police to wear cameras to record their actions is one proposal filed by lawmakers in response to the fatal shooting of

Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black man, by a white Ferguson police officer.
Supporters of body cameras say widespread use would provide evidence of what happened in situations like Brown’s shooting.
Koster agrees but says there should be restrictions on the footage to prevent voyeurism at the expense of privacy for those recorded.

JEFFERSON CITY (AP) – Nearly 38 percent more Missourians than last year have signed up for health insurance under the federal exchange.

U.S. Health and Human Services data released Tuesday shows that 209,336 residents had signed up for coverage as of Jan. 16, up about 57,000 from the first enrollment period. The number of enrollees could grow larger because the deadline for getting coverage doesn’t end until Feb. 15.

Among the people who’ve signed up so far this year, about 88 percent chose a plan with financial assistance. Forty-one percent were new to the federal insurance exchange, and 59 percent re-enrolled.

Total enrollment in the 37 states served by HealthCare.gov is about 7.1 million people.

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) today introduced bipartisan legislation to protect rural Critical Access Hospitals (CAH) and their patients by eliminating a new “condition of payment” rule from The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). This overly burdensome rule requires physicians in rural CAHs to predict and limit a patients’ stay to within 96 hours. Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.) introduced the bill with Senator Roberts. The bill has 16 original cosponsors and the support of the American Hospital Association, the National Rural Health Association and the American College of Surgeons.

“This absurd rule puts arbitrary limits on how many hours patients can stay in critical access hospitals and asks doctors to be clairvoyant and predict the unknown when admitting a patient. This puts the doctor in a terrible position and damages the all-important doctor-patient relationship,” Roberts said.

“We need to focus on ensuring rural patients have access to the health system, not come up with bureaucratic ways to make it harder for those patients to get quality care from their doctors based on where they live.”

The Senators’ bill, the Critical Access Hospital Relief Act of 2015 removes the “condition of payment” for Critical Access Hospitals that requires a physician to certify upon admission that each patient will be discharged or transferred in less than 96 hours.

The American Hospital Association has announced their support of the legislation. “The AHA supports this bill to relieve our nation’s critical access hospitals (CAHs) from the unnecessary, burdensome federal regulation requiring a physician to certify a patient will be released or transferred within 96 hours,” said Rick Pollack, executive vice president of the American Hospital Association. “This bipartisan legislation would provide important relief for CAHs, and help ensure all Americans – no matter where they live — have access to essential health care services.”

At issue is whether the hospital can be reimbursed if, for instance, a physician certifies that they expect the patient to be treated and discharged within 96 hours, but the situation changes and the patient must be kept longer. The physician will be faced with a scenario in which they have failed to meet the terms of their certification. This is likely to lead to premature discharges and re-admissions, both of which CMS has taken actions to minimize. In some cases rural patients may be forced to travel to an urban hospital a great distance away.

The bill is cosponsored by Senators Jon Tester (D-Mont), Dan Coats (R-Ind), Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), John Hoeven (R-N.D.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), John Thune (R-S.D.), Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).

Senator Roberts is a co-chairman of the Senate Rural Health Caucus. He is a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee and a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas House members are moving to ban post-midnight sessions of their chamber and make it harder for their leaders to bundle multiple bills into a single piece of legislation.

The House gave first-round approval Tuesday to rules for the chamber that say it can’t be in session from midnight to 8 a.m., unless two-thirds of its members allow it.

Also given first-round approval were rules governing interactions between the House and Senate. They would prevent negotiators for the two chambers from combining more than two bills into a single measure when trying to resolve their differences.

Critics said both practices lead to sloppy legislating.

The House plans to take final action on both sets of rules Wednesday. The Senate must approve the joint rules as well.

MICHAEL FELBERBAUM, AP Tobacco Writer

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — The U.S. surgeon general says officials are “in desperate need of clarity” on electronic cigarettes to help guide public health policies.

Dr. Vivek Murthy, the country’s senior public health official, addressed the battery-powered devices that heat liquid nicotine during a stop Tuesday in Richmond.

The newly-appointed Murthy says the technology should be embraced if evidence shows e-cigarettes are able to help those who otherwise have trouble quitting smoking.

But he says he’s concerned about them because there are many unanswered questions about health impacts of e-cigarettes.

Murthy also expressed worries over how quickly the use of the products has grown, particularly among youth.

The U.S. Senate confirmed the 37-year-old physician and Harvard Medical School instructor’s nomination in December.

The surgeon general’s office has previously been instrumental in guiding tobacco control.

By ANDY MARSO

Rep. John Whitmer says he didn’t follow the ongoing debate on whether to repeal the state’s renewable energy standards before he arrived in the Legislature this month. But as a new member of the House Energy and Environment Committee, Whitmer said he anticipates being immersed in the debate soon.

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll hear about it,” he said with a laugh. “I’m sure it will come up.” Whitmer, a Republican from Wichita, was among lawmakers on House and Senate energy and utility committees who recently heard informational briefings from a host of energy sector lobbyists and government officials who regulate the industry.

There have been no bill hearings yet, but environmental activists and wind industry representatives are girding for another fight over the state’s renewable energy standards and possible efforts to delay the state’s compliance with new rules from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that seek to curb carbon emissions.

The emissions have been linked to global climate change, which has implications for human health including illnesses related to heat and poor air quality. The renewable portfolio standards (RPS) that legislators passed in 2009 require Kansas utilities to glean 20 percent of their electricity from sources like wind, solar and biomass by 2020. Utility companies have been steadily climbing toward that goal ahead of schedule.

But groups including Americans for Prosperity — which is tied to Wichita brothers Charles and David Koch, who made billions in the oil and natural gas industry — have said the standards distort the free market and should be scuttled. Three years of efforts to repeal the Kansas standards culminated last year in a House vote that fell three short of phasing them out.

New House makeup The 2014 elections included all 125 House seats, but the resulting body is much the same: Republican-dominated, but split between Republicans who believe the standards are an unfair government manipulation of the energy market and those, particularly from wind-producing counties, who believe promoting renewable development has been good for the state. Lobbyists on each side are trying to pin down where the new House members stand. “I’m not a big ‘government-interfering-in-the-marketplace’ guy,” said Whitmer, who campaigned as a conservative. “My general inclination is, ‘Why is the government messing in incentives?’

But what is it, 19 percent and it’s 1 percent away? There’s a pragmatic (argument). I’d have to hear some more about it.” Rep. John Carmichael, a Democrat from Wichita who also sits on the energy committee, said he thinks a bill to end the renewable standards probably will advance out of committee again.

But he doubts it will go farther than that. “Obviously the (energy) committee has been reappointed in a fashion that favors reporting out repeal of RPS,” Carmichael said. “As to whether the composition of the full House will lead to repeal of RPS, I doubt it.”

Kimberly Svaty, a spokeswoman for the Wind Coalition, which represents several wind industry interests, said her group hopes legislators will focus on the state’s budget crisis this year instead. “There’s certainly the recognition that the state is currently experiencing a pretty difficult, challenging time ahead and perhaps lawmakers should stay focused on addressing those economic issues first and foremost without getting into any of those sideshow issues,” she said.

The standards have been a successful policy for the state, Svaty said, driving billions in wind energy investments that have helped push utilities to within a single percentage point of their 2020 goal five years early.

During a committee hearing last week, Rep. Craig McPherson, a Republican from Overland Park, asked Svaty if the wind industry’s success means the RPS should end. “Is there a point we kind of say, ‘Job well done’?” McPherson asked. “We’re currently at 19.4 percent; the renewable energy portfolio standard takes us to 20 percent. When we get to that 20 percent do we say, ‘OK, we’re good. We don’t need to have these artificial market constraints; the wind industry is alive and vibrant’?”

Svaty said that’s a conversation the Legislature could have, but having the standards in place sends a message to the wind industry that the state remains committed to renewable energy. Changing them could jeopardize the sense of regulatory certainty that drove innovation and expansion of a wind industry that will be key to the state meeting the new EPA emission guidelines, she said. State or federal plan?

The Kansas House passed a resolution last year condemning the federal plan, after removing language that denied the existence of human-caused climate change. Moti Rieber, a rabbi who heads Kansas Interfaith Power & Light, an organization of environmentally minded religious leaders, said he fears legislators will attempt to block the Kansas Department of Health and Environment from forming a plan to meet the EPA mandates.

He said they could order legislative review of any state plan, direct KDHE to wait until any litigation over the mandates is over before developing a plan, or simply bar KDHE from forming a plan. “We basically don’t want them to interfere in any way with KDHE’s ability to develop a state plan,” Rieber said. “If we don’t have a state plan, we’ll have a federal plan, and none of us want that.”

The Senate Public Utilities Committee heard a briefing last week on the EPA rules — known as 111(d) for their place in the Clean Air Act — from state officials who said they doubted that any plan, state or federal, could meet the emission reduction targets. A state plan is due in the summer of 2016 and initial reductions must begin in 2020. “That 2020 goal is a real challenge, because a lot of changes would have to be made,” said Tom Gross, the chief of KDHE’s air monitoring and planning division.

“Changes in power generation, transmission, you name it, all tend to take more time than the time we have.” But Gross said he’d still prefer that the compliance plan remain within the purview of the state rather than the federal government. Rieber said his group thinks KDHE and the Kansas Corporation Commission are “significantly underestimating” how much the state can reduce its emissions by using energy more efficiently.

“Oh, and climate change is a real thing,” he added, “and we should do our part.” Retaining the state’s renewable standards also fits that philosophy, Rieber said. “We trust that if (repeal) comes up again, it will get the same result it got last year, which is the policy will be upheld.”

Sen. Rob Olson, a Republican from Olathe who chairs the Senate Utilities Committee, advocated repealing the standards last year but said last week he is “not looking for any changes either way” on it this year. He does, however, want his committee members to be prepared to debate the standards and other energy issues. “Right now we are just re-educating the committee, to make sure if we have some major issues before us — if the RPS comes back, or if we’re dealing with 111(d) or any other issues like that — that the committee has all the answers before we get to debating,” Olson said. “Just to make a better debate on the floor, and a better debate in committee.”

— Ashley Booker contributed to this article.

 

Andy Marso is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The government says it is finding more guns in carry-on bags at U.S. airports.

The Transportation Security Administration says officers discovered 2,212 weapons during safety screenings last year. That is 22 percent more than 2013.

The numbers are relatively small considering about 2 million people go through screenings daily. But TSA spokesman Mark Howell says the increase of 22 percent is still startling. Firearms were found at a total of 224 U.S. airports, or 19 more than the year before.

Howell says more people seem to be bringing weapons into airports in carry-on bags, most often by accident. He says the increase could be linked to more people with weapons permits and varying state laws on firearms.

Firearms can be sent through security in checked bags if they’re unloaded and stored properly.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri state Rep. Keith English of Florissant is leaving the Democratic Party to become an independent.
English on Tuesday announced the move, citing support for gun rights and right-to-work legislation.
English had distanced himself from Democrats in the past. He provided the pivotal vote last May when he was the only Democrat to join Republicans in overriding Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of an income tax cut.
English says he can better serve his district as an independent. He says informed discussions on policy matter more than whether he’s conservative or liberal.
English’s move further reduces the number of Democratic members of Missouri’s House. There are 44 Democrats and 118 Republicans.
Rep. Linda Black of Park Hills switched to the Republican Party the day after voters re-elected her in November.