As meds-for-meth bill dies, backer asks colleagues to find solution

The bill that would have required prescriptions for three popular decongestants used to make methamphetamine "was buried today, but not without a eulogy and a promise to resurrect it," Renee Shaw reported for Kentucky Educational Television.

KET's coverage was highlighted by parts of a floor speech from the bill's sponsor, Sen. Tom Jensen, R-London, who challenged his colleagues to come up with a solution to the meds-for-meth problem. "We're waiting for something very terrible to happen by not acting on this," he said. Holding out the prospects of wrecks, fires, explosions and other accidents meth makers could cause, he warned, "A tragedy's gonna happen here and then we're all really gonna feel bad."

Shaw noted that lobbies opposing the bill had creating "polarizing publicity" with radio and full-page newspaper advertising. A Senate committee approved the bill on a bipartisan 6-4 vote early last month but the measure never attracted enough support to gain a vote in the full Senate.

"If my solution is not the answer, figure out a way," Jensen pleaded. In another floor speech, Sen. Joey Pendleton, D-Hopkinsville, thanked Jensen for his work and said, "We have a tremendous problem here . . . I'm like him. Tell us what we need to do."

Three Florida women put pressure on Sunshine State's "pill mills," legislators, governor

As Kentucky officials ask Florida legislators to crack down on pill mills, three Florida women have started a grassroots effort to spread awareness about the problem. Nurse Renee Doyle, respiratory therapist Joy Saghy and nurse Janet Colbert, all of whom have experienced the effects of prescription-drug addiction first-hand, have formed STOPP Now — Stop the Organized Pill Pushers Now, The Miami Herald's Audra D.S. Burch reports.

To spread awareness, Saghy, Colbert and Doyle host rallies at pain clinics. Their goal is to have oxycodone banned, except when treating advanced cancer, and to support the establishment of a tracking database. About 50 people generally show up at the rallies. Next week, they will go to Tallahassee to meet with senators about the issue. "We will tell them that these pills are destroying our community," Colbert said.

In February, Attorney General Pam Bondi introduced proposals that would cut down on the problem, one of which would be to establish a database that tracks prescription sales. But Florida Gov. Rick Scott is firmly against such a database, saying it is costly and infringes on privacy.

Each day, about seven people die by overdosing on prescription pills, Burch reports. In the first half of 2010, Florida doctors prescribed nine times more oxycodone than the rest of the entire country.

While the problem is reportedly great in Florida, the drugs find their way to Kentucky, through traffickers who travel to Florida to "doctor shop" to gain prescriptions for pain medications at each stop. They then return to Kentucky, which does have a tracking database, to sell the pills they're collected. (Read more)

UK loses branding for high-quality nursing care

The University of Kentucky hospital has lost magnet status, a designation given to facilities that offer high-quality nursing care, the Lexington Herald-Leader's Mary Meehan reports.

The recent review says UK, which advertised the designation by flying its flag (H-L photo by Charles Bertram), did not have a "structure for supporting a culture of patient safety." Nurses did not meet the grade when it came to "friendliness/courtesy," "promptness/response to call," and "attention to special/personal needs." Their attitudes toward requests also were apparently lacking.

Dr. Richard Lofgren, chief clinical officer for UKHealthcare, downplayed the loss. "It is a recognition from a professional society," he said. "You can get recognition from a whole lot of professional societies." But other hospital officials say "the designation means so much to them that they make meeting the expensive and time-consuming application process part of the job responsibilities of employees," Meehan reports.

Kentucky facilities that have magnet status include: Baptist East Hospital in Louisville; Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington; Frankfort Regional Medical Center in Frankfort; Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville; and St. Elizabeth Healthcare in Northern Kentucky.

Kentucky's state health plan receives $30 million from federal health reform to offset costs of covering early retirees

Kentucky's state employee health plan received nearly $30 million from a federal program established under the new health care law meant to help pay for early retiree benefits. Nationwide, $535 million in health benefit costs have been reimbursed through the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program, says a press release from Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

The program was set up to keep employee-sponsored health plans "providing coverage to retirees who are 55 or older but not yet eligible for Medicare," The Courier-Journal's Patrick Howington reports. Most employers have stopped doing so. In 1988, two of three employers provided health coverage to their retirees. In 2009, only one in three did. The funds will help keep premium increases from rising too sharply, Kentucky Personnel Secretary Tim Longmeyer said.

Kentucky's state plan includes about 45,000 retirees and some spouses or dependents. Only state plans in California, New Jersey and Georgia received more funds. Two undisclosed Kentucky health plans received about $123,000 in funding. More than 30 Kentucky health-plan sponsors have been approved to participate. Sponsors can "only apply to recoup claims for retirees whose health costs exceed $15,000," Howington reports. (Read more)

States can't reveal drug costs because federal law makes them secret; Montana governor blames drug lobby, Ky. contractor

When Montana journalists asked Gov. Brian Schweitzer to reveal the prices the state pays for drugs in government health care programs, he said he wanted to tell them, but had to refuse because federal law keeps the information secret because Congress is "bought and paid for" by drug manufacturers. "Congress has created a system so that even the states, which buy tens of millions of dollars worth of these drugs, have no idea what we pay on a per-unit basis," said Schweitzer, a conservative Democrat with a maverick streak.

"Actually, Schweitzer does know what the state pays — but, before acquiring the information last summer, had to have his chief counsel sign a written agreement not to disclose it publicly," Mike Dennison of the Billings Gazette reports. "Schweitzer said the drug industry wants to keep secret the rebates it gives to states buying drugs for public programs, because it doesn't want regular retail customers to know how much more they're paying for drugs."

Schweitzer obtained the information last summer when he was trying to compare what the federal-state Medicaid program for the poor and disabled was paying for drugs compared to the cost in Canada. Montana news outlets argued that the state open-records law requires him to release "documents in his possession that list public money paid out or received by the state," Dennison reports. But the governor's chief legal counsel "said federal law bars disclosure of the information requested by the news organizations, and that federal law pre-empts Montana's open-records laws."

Also, "Magellan Medicaid Services, the Virginia-based contractor that negotiates additional drug rebates for the state Medicaid program, also claimed that the rebate information is a trade secret protected from public disclosure," Dennison reports. MMS, which works for several states including Kentucky, said revealing the information would hamper its ability to compete with other companies doing the work." It seems to us that if all such information from all states were released, that wouldn't be a problem.

Almost all nursing homes have employees with criminal past, estimated 5% of employees; background-check bill seems dead

A new federal report says 92 percent of nursing homes employ someone with a criminal record. Most states require such facilities to check the backgrounds of applicants for employment, but the standards vary and some, such as Kentucky, do not check the backgrounds of those not involved in patient care, and a bill to extend that to them appears dead in the General Assembly.

"About 5 percent of nursing home workers—or one out of every 20—had at least one conviction, according to the report, which took a random sample of 260 nursing homes certified by Medicare and ran FBI background checks on their workers," reports Marian Wang of ProPublica, the nonprofit investigative news agency.

“The current system of background checks is haphazard, inconsistent and full of gaping holes in many states,” Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., chairman of the Senate Aging Committee, told The New York Times. “Predators can easily evade detection during the hiring process, securing jobs that allow them to assault, abuse and steal from defenseless elders.” The lack of national standards allows people convicted in one state to work in another—a more significant factor in states like Kentucky, which border several other states and have population centers on the borders.

Judge issues permanent injunction barring Medi-Share, a Christian health-coverage plan, from operating in Kentucky

After a legal battle that lasted almost nine years, the Christian health-coverage plan Medi-Share will be prohibited from operating in Kentucky, Franklin Circuit Judge Thomas Wingate decided today.

The state Department of Insurance and the Office of the Attorney General first sued Medi-Share in June 2002, saying the group was an unauthorized insurer. The Florida-based group claimed it was a "sharing program," and so exempt from state regulation. In August 2010, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled Medi-Share was insurance and "was not exempt from state regulation under the religious publication statute," says a press release from the Public Protection Cabinet.

"Medi-Share members affirm a statement of Christian beliefs and pledge to follow a code that includes no tobacco or illegal drugs, no sex outside of marriage, and no abuse of alcohol or legal medications. Every month, they pay a fixed 'share' to cover the medical expenses of members in need. The cost usually is less than private insurance, but it’s not tax deductible. Members use a network of medical providers," Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar of The Associated Press reports.

Wingate signed a permanent injunction against Medi-Share, prohibiting the group and any successor program from operating in the state unless it obtains appropriate documentation or actually qualifies as a "sharing program." Medi-Share members in Kentucky should immediately try to find health insurance elsewhere.