Medicaid cuts threaten autism and lung cancer research, endangering health care for all
I am deeply concerned over cuts to services including Medicaid. Medicaid pays for personal care, day programs, housing and therapy, which equates to jobs and keeping the parents of disabled adults employed. Many of us want to develop additional housing programs in Missouri through private-public partnerships because there are few options for adults with profound autism.
I pray that we take into account the common good of all, including our duty to others. To remember the most disabled Missourians is to remember those who need our charity and our love, like my son Isaac.
I pray we promote social justice and remember the more than 4,000 Missourians with profound autism who would be hurt by Medicaid funding cuts.
- Julia Chaney Faughn, Macon, Missouri
As a lung cancer survivor from the Johnson County area, I am deeply concerned about the massive cuts to Medicaid and health care being proposed by Congress. Taking away coverage for millions of people will jeopardize our progress in defeating this disease.
All the changes Congress is considering to Medicaid — including adding work requirements and reducing funding for expansion, as well as repealing parts of the Affordable Care Act — would terminate health coverage when people need it most.
I urge readers to contact their members of Congress and demand they protect health care. Visit Lung.org/Save-Medicaid to learn more and take action.
- Ann Howard, Gardner
Missourians came out and passed Amendment 1. We came out and passed the right for abortion and women's health. Did the Republicans in Jefferson City not hear us? Their constituents spoke loudly.
Americans across the country are seeing our votes dismissed by politicians ignoring our wishes and not implementing our choices
- Ken Henderson, Kansas City
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller's comment that the Trump administration is 'actively looking' at potentially suspending habeas corpus in the deportation of illegal immigrants is dangerous. (May 14, 14A, 'Trump's attacks on due process are a dangerous shift away from democracy') Miller's position clearly threatens democracy. Habeas corpus protects the civil liberty of everyone. Its suspension would be a slippery slope.
What constitutes illegal behavior? Is it any action the administration doesn't like? Would it be illegal to give an undocumented immigrant a sandwich? My point is that criminal behavior must not be defined by the predilections of any administration.
Abraham Lincoln, unfortunately, did not leave a good example by suspending habeas corpus during the Civil War, suppressing judicial dissent and ignoring judicial findings. But at least the Civil War was a real national emergency.
That brings up a second point: Our so-called national immigration emergency today is dubious at best. Already undocumented immigrants who were otherwise contributing to society have been swept up and deported, without due process. Already two judges have been arrested.
I hope Congress conducts an actual six-month National Emergencies Act review, as required by law. One thing is certain: This fails in the court of public opinion.
- Gregory Ellermann, Kansas City
I grew up in Rolla, the hometown of the very Republican John Powell, who cast Missouri's votes for Ronald Reagan in 1980. I went through school with his son. Mr. Powell would hire high school boys to unload boxcars twice a year for $10 per hour — a fortune in 1975.
Rolla was also home to Mel Carnahan, Democratic Missouri treasurer, lieutenant governor and governor, who was posthumously elected to the U.S. senate. He did not return to politics until his children were grown. I was in Scouts with an older son, Randy, and a younger son. Rusty. I rode in his station wagon many times. I will never forget Randy, the first 'big kid' who paid attention to 11-year-old me.
Rolla was a small town. I never heard one bad word about Mr. Powell or Mr. Carnahan. They were like everyone's dad. The Greatest Generation came home from World War II older, much wiser, with a little money and a dream.
Republicans and Democrats were friends. They both wanted the same thing — to preserve the world order they fought for and that their friends died for.
Things are not like that anymore. This is not normal.
- Randall Jones, Independence
Kansas City fails to celebrate its musical icons until they have passed on. People such as Tim Whitmer, David Basse, Millie Edwards, Danny Embrey, Stan Kessler and Rod Fleeman, among many others, need to be celebrated while we can still enjoy listening to them.
And Lonnie McFadden, the multitalented phenom with a rich family history in jazz, should be named Kansas City's ambassador, the official greeter for any visiting celebrities. He is handsome, charming, well-spoken and kind. There could be no better example of what Kansas City is, where it has been and where it is going than Mr. McFadden.
- James L. Mowbray, Kansas City
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Miami Herald
10 minutes ago
- Miami Herald
Why Florida is missing out on $200 million a year in Medicaid funding for schools
Florida lawmakers reached a rare consensus after the deadly Parkland school shooting: More money was needed for mental health counseling at schools. 'We haven't put enough resources into mental health issues,' said then-Sen. Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples. 'And look what happens.' Two years later, lawmakers passed a bill allowing Medicaid dollars assigned to school districts to be used for more types of care for kids, including counseling. But state officials didn't adopt the changes. And they have refused to comply with federal guidelines that would help school districts provide that care. Florida schools have missed out on about $200 million a year in Medicaid funding — a total of $2.2 billion since 2014 — to support children's mental health counseling, physical therapy and other services, advocates say. Their calls to recoup funding come as schools face multimillion-dollar shortfalls in the budget year that began July 1 — and as kids struggle with the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. They say the problems lie with the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees Medicaid in the state and reports to Gov. Ron DeSantis. Documents show that for more than a decade, the agency hasn't followed federal reimbursement guidelines for school-based services — one of the few areas of Medicaid the Trump administration and Congress have not targeted for reductions. The federal program provides in-school medical care and instruction for school-age children with physical or developmental disabilities who qualify for Medicaid. About 2 million children in Florida are on Medicaid, which provides free or low-cost health care to people who qualify. Without the money, school districts have struggled to find therapists, nurses and others to treat children. Some kids experienced lower-quality care or had that care delayed during critical periods of their lives, observers say. The state agency strayed from federal guidelines in 2014, when the U.S. government changed its rules regarding the reimbursements. Experts consulted by the Times said Florida is one of the few states, and perhaps the only one, that is using the outdated payment method. The federal Center for Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program Services warned the agency in 2020 that it was 'not in compliance with current financing rules,' but no substantial action followed. Over that time, instead of collecting $2.2 billion from federal coffers to cover school-based expenses, the state received about $250 million. With money tight, school officials want the agency to make the necessary fixes. 'This is a significant agency failure,' said Ken Kniepmann, former state assistant deputy secretary for Medicaid Policy and Quality at the agency. He was hired in part to improve the system but said he was later instructed to stop. 'It's really unconscionable. Nobody should be OK with this.' A spokesperson for the agency said it did not have sufficient funding to update its reimbursement method until this year's legislative session, and it is committed to getting it done next year. Kniepmann said the agency had not asked the Legislature for permission to draw down the federal dollars needed to enact the changes until this year. The Hillsborough County school board held a workshop in April to address the Medicaid funding gap. Hillsborough received about $6 million in Medicaid reimbursements a year ago for the services it provided, specialist Deneen Gorassini told her board, but would have gotten about $10 million more if the state agency followed federal guidelines. It's money that could have expanded medical and mental health services in schools. Other districts experienced similar-sized gaps, according to Kniepmann's calculations. 'If we can get (the agency) to do their job and submit a (state plan amendment), we could start getting reimbursed based on our expenses, which are way more than what we are getting reimbursed now,' Gorassini told the board. Since 1997, the state has been reimbursing school districts for services — such as counseling or speech therapy — based on a flat rate. In 2014, the federal government required states to reimburse school districts based on the actual costs of those services, which is much higher. Five years ago, federal officials wrote Florida telling them it hadn't adopted the change, and the state had 90 days to comply. 'Please note that you may not pay a rate from a fee schedule and use this as a certification of cost,' Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services acting director Todd McMillion wrote Florida officials in March 2020. The center said it is working with the state to resolve the concerns listed in that letter. Florida is still paying schools a flat rate that has changed little since 1997. Karen Thomas, a Medicaid specialist for Leon County schools for more than 20 years, said that while the formulas are complex, the solution should be 'extremely simple.' 'We're 90% there, maybe 95% already, in the way we are doing things,' Thomas said of districts' processes for collecting receipts and monitoring providers' time. 'They have everything they need to be in compliance with federal payment methodology. They just need to change the invoice, one line on the invoice. ... The fault is squarely in the agency's failure to come into compliance.' The state has shown it can make the switch, Thomas said. She pointed out that when federal authorities ordered county health departments to start billing for actual costs instead of flat rates in 2020, the state quickly shifted. She noted that school-based services are 'a very niche portion' of the state's Medicaid budget — somewhere in the neighborhood of 1% — and that over time agency officials have paid less attention to them, decreasing communication with school districts and reducing staff dedicated to the service. The issue shouldn't be a side note, as it affects the lives of some of Florida's neediest children, she said. And the pandemic made kids' mental health a national crisis. 'Kids used to miss school because of asthma,' Thomas said. 'Now they're missing school because of anxiety and depression.' After the 2018 Parkland attack, state lawmakers wanted to make sure students were getting proper mental health assistance in schools. In 2020, they passed legislation allowing schools to use Medicaid dollars for other types of care. DeSantis signed it into law. But his Agency for Health Care Administration never rewrote the agency's rules to allow school districts to use the new law. 'The law was very clear,' said retired Sen. Bill Montford, D-Tallahassee, who sponsored the 2020 bill. 'Why they didn't do it I don't know.' Rep. Christine Hunchofsky, a Democrat who represents Parkland in the House, repeatedly has asked agency officials if the state is doing all it can to leverage federal money for student services. The issue comes up frequently on the Commission on Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder, to which Hunchofsky was appointed by the Republican House speaker. She said the agency has provided few clear answers. Meanwhile, she's heard plenty from the school districts, and said she plans to pursue the questions further. Montford, also executive director of the state's superintendents association, said agency officials have told his group that they are preparing a rule revision to go into effect in mid-2026. That's when states are supposed to comply with an updated 2023 federal guidance on school-based services. But Kniepmann, who worked as associate director for health at the Florida Conference for Catholic Bishops before moving to the health agency, argued the state is stalling for reasons that remain unclear to him. He said the 2023 guidance was not intended to be a way for Florida to further delay implementing rules put in place more than a decade ago. Every holdup, he and others said, means less money available to pay for medical and related services. 'Eleven years and $2.2 billion is not a little thing,' he said. Hillsborough district officials, also leery of the state's ability to pull off a new rule by mid-2026, said they are looking into a different approach to bring in more Medicaid money. Gorassini told the board that her department would conduct a rate study for each service it provides and submit the updated amounts to the state for inclusion on the existing reimbursement schedule. Kniepmann said it's a long-shot effort that requires a lot of work at the district level, adding that the agency has discouraged such an approach. It's worth a shot, though, Gorassini told the Hillsborough school board. 'We'll never get what we spend,' she said. 'But in the meantime we're going to try to maximize our reimbursement.' What's really at stake is student health, said Thomas, the Leon County Medicaid specialist who also serves on the National Alliance for Medicaid in Education leadership team. Her district stands to reap about $2 million more per year if the change is made. 'That is the difference between being able to hire actual medical professionals who have the ability to recognize actual medical issues, and purchase medical equipment, actual things that could help the children that are most medically needy in this county,' she said. 'When I can't afford to pay for a nurse, all kids suffer.'
Yahoo
18 minutes ago
- Yahoo
‘There has to be a better way': CA Senator Alex Padilla to introduce immigration reform legislation
(INSIDE CALIFORNIA POLITICS) — California Senator Alex Padilla will introduce legislation on Monday that would provide a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants. The bill, dubbed 'Renewing Immigration Provisions of the Immigration Act of 1929,' would provide access to lawful permanent resident status by advancing the date for eligibility under immigration registry. Immigration registry is an existing process that allows individuals to apply for permanent resident status on the basis of their long-term residency in the U.S. In order to qualify, individuals must have entered the country on or before a specified date and must demonstrate good moral character and continuous residence since their entry. After its creation in 1929, Congress advanced the registry date four times, most recently in 1986, when the date was set at January 1, 1972. Only non-citizens who entered the United States by that date are eligible to apply for permanent resident status through registry. The date is now so far in the past that few individuals are eligible. Padilla's bill would: Update the outdated 'Registry' cutoff date so that long-term residents may qualify for lawful permanent resident status if they have lived in the U.S. continuously for at least seven years prior to filing an application under the Registry Preempt the need for further congressional action by making the Registry eligibility cutoff rolling, instead of tying it to a specific date, as it is now Provide a pathway to a green card for Dreamers, TPS holders and other forcibly displaced individuals, and highly skilled members of the workforce, such as H-1B visa holders, who have been waiting years for a visa number to become available Padilla's announcement comes as new polls show growing frustration over President Donald Trump's mass deportation effort and just one month after he was forcibly removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's press conference. 'It's not just the general public that has seen the cruelty and the overreach of Trump's deportation agenda,' Padilla said. 'The public opinion polls out there show that the vast majority of the American people see it for what it is and they support immigration. They know that it's a good thing and that not just DREAMers and farmworkers, but so many others deserve that pathway to legalization and potentially, eventually citizenship.' Padilla spoke to Inside California Politics host Nikki Laurenzo about the legislation and its likelihood of advancing in the Senate. Padilla said he has not secured support from any of his republican colleagues. 'Look, it may be tough. It certainly will be a lot of work, but I think the time is now,' Padilla said. 'Not a day has gone by since I've been in the Senate that I'm not talking to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle about the need to modernize our immigration system. And I point to California as an example. We're the fourth largest economy in the world, not despite our diverse and immigrant communities in California, but because of their contributions as workers, as consumers, as entrepreneurs.' Padilla says his proposal is based on a simple principle: if you've built a life here, you deserve a chance to stay. 'Let me be clear, if they truly were only focusing on dangerous, violent criminals, as Donald Trump likes to say repeatedly, there would be no debate, there would be no discussion,' Padilla said. 'But what we are seeing on a daily basis is the reality that the majority of the people being arrested, being detained, being deported have no violent criminal history.' Padilla also weighed in on whether former Vice President Kamala Harris should run for California governor in 2026. Inside California Politics airs this weekend during the following times: KTLA: Sunday, July 27 at 5:30 Saturday, July 26 at 6:30 Saturday, July 26 at 6:30 p.m. and Sunday, July 27 at 8:30 Sunday, July 27 at 5:30 a.m. and 11:00 Sunday, July 27 at 8:30 Saturday, July 26 at 11:00 p.m. and Sunday, July 27 at 7:30 a.m. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Solve the daily Crossword
USA Today
33 minutes ago
- USA Today
Trump's golf trip to Scotland reopens old wounds for some of his neighbors
BALMEDIE, Scotland − Long before talk of hush-money payments, election subversion or mishandling classified documents, before his executive orders were the subject of U.S. Supreme Court challenges, before he was the 45th and then the 47th president: on a wild and windswept stretch of beach in northeast Scotland, Donald Trump the businessman was accused of being a bad neighbor. "This place will never, ever belong to Trump," Michael Forbes, 73, a retired quarry worker and salmon fisherman, said this week as he took a break from fixing a roof on his farm near Aberdeen. The land he owns is surrounded, though disguised in places by trees and hedges, by a golf resort owned by Trump's family business in Scotland, Trump International Scotland. For nearly 20 years, Forbes and several other families who live in Balmedie have resisted what they describe as bullying efforts by Trump to buy their land. (He has denied the allegations.) They and others also say he's failed to deliver on his promises to bring thousands of jobs to the area. Those old wounds are being reopened as Trump returns to Scotland for a four-day visit beginning July 25. It's the country where his mother was born. He appears to have great affection for it. Trump is visiting his golf resorts at Turnberry, on the west coast about 50 miles from Glasgow, and at Balmedie, where Forbes' 23 acres of jumbled, tractor-strewn land, which he shares with roaming chickens and three Highland cows, abut Trump's glossy and manicured golf resort. On July 28, Trump will briefly meet in Balmedie with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to "refine" a recent U.S.-U.K. trade deal, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Golf, a little diplomacy: Trump heads to Scotland In Scotland, where estimates from the National Library of Scotland suggest that as many as 34 out of the 45 American presidents have Scottish ancestry, opinions hew toward the he's-ill-suited-for-the-job, according to surveys. "Trump? He just doesn't know how to treat people," said Forbes, who refuses to sell. What Trump's teed up in Scotland Part of the Balmedie community's grievances relate to Trump's failure to deliver on his promises. According to planning documents, public accounts and his own statements, Trump promised, beginning in 2006, to inject $1.5 billion into his golf project six miles north of Aberdeen. He has spent about $120 million. Approval for the development, he vowed, came with more than 1,000 permanent jobs and 5,000 construction gigs attached. Instead, there were 84, meaning fewer than the 100 jobs that already existed when the land he bought was a shooting range. Instead of a 450-room luxury hotel and hundreds of homes that Trump pledged to build for the broader community, there is a 19-room boutique hotel and a small clubhouse with a restaurant and shop that sells Trump-branded whisky, leather hip flasks and golf paraphernalia. Financial filings show that his course on the Menie Estate in Balmedie lost $1.9 million in 2023 − its 11th consecutive financial loss since he acquired the 1,400-acre grounds in 2006. Residents who live and work near the course say that most days, even in the height of summer, the fairway appears to be less than half full. Representatives for Trump International say the plan all along has been to gradually phase in the development at Balmedie and that it is not realistic or fair to expect everything to be built overnight. There's also support for Trump from some residents who live nearby, and in the wider Aberdeen business community. One Balmedie resident who lives in the shadow of Trump's course said that before Trump the area was nothing but featureless sand dunes and that his development, carved between those dunes, made the entire landscape look more attractive. Fergus Mutch, a policy advisor for the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, said Trump's golf resort has become a "key bit of the tourism offer" that attracts "significant spenders" to a region gripped by economic turmoil, steep job cuts and a prolonged downturn in its North Sea oil and gas industry. Trump in Scotland: Liked or loathed? Still, recent surveys show that 70% of Scots hold an unfavorable opinion of Trump. Despite his familial ties and deepening investments in Scotland, Trump is more unpopular among Scots than with the British public overall, according to an Ipsos survey from March. It shows 57% of people in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland don't view Trump positively. King Charles invites Trump: American president snags another UK state visit While in Balmedie this time, Trump will open a new 18-hole golf course on his property dedicated to his mother, Mary Anne MacLeod, who was a native of Lewis, in Scotland's Western Isles. He is likely to be met with a wave of protests around the resort, as well as the one in Turnberry. The Stop Trump Coalition, a group of campaigners who oppose most of Trump's domestic and foreign policies and the way he conducts his private and business affairs, is organizing a protest in Aberdeen and outside the U.S. consulate in Edinburgh. During Trump's initial visit to Scotland as president, in his first term, thousands of protesters sought to disrupt his visit, lining key routes and booing him. One protester even flew a powered paraglider into the restricted airspace over his Turnberry resort that bore a banner that read, "Trump: well below par #resist." 'Terrific guy': The Trump-Epstein party boy friendship lasted a decade, ended badly Trump's course in Turnberry has triggered less uproar than his Balmedie one because locals say that he's invested millions of dollars to restore the glamour of its 101-year-old hotel and three golf courses after he bought the site in 2014. Trump versus the families Three families still live directly on or adjacent to Trump's Balmedie golf resort. They say that long before the world had any clue about what type of president a billionaire New York real estate mogul and reality-TV star would become, they had a pretty good idea. Forbes is one of them. He said that shortly after Trump first tried to persuade him and his late wife to sell him their farm, workers he hired deliberately sabotaged an underground water pipe that left the Forbes – and his mother, then in her 90s, lived in her own nearby house – without clean drinking water for five years. Trump International declined to provide a fresh comment on those allegations, but a spokesperson previously told USA TODAY it "vigorously refutes" them. It said that when workers unintentionally disrupted a pipe that ran into an "antiquated" makeshift "well" jointly owned by the Forbeses on Trump's land, it was repaired immediately. Trump has previously called Forbes a "disgrace" who "lives like a pig." 'I don't have a big enough flagpole' David Milne, 61, another of Trump's seething Balmedie neighbors, lives in a converted coast guard station with views overlooking Trump's course and of the dunes and the North Sea beyond. In 2009, Trump offered him and his wife about $260,000 for his house and its one-fifth acre of land, Milne said. Trump was caught on camera saying he wanted to remove it because it was "ugly." Trump, he said, "threw in some jewelry," a golf club membership (Milne doesn't play), use of a spa (not yet built) and the right to buy, at cost, a house in a related development (not yet constructed). Milne valued the offer at about half the market rate. When Milne refused that offer, he said that landscapers working for Trump partially blocked the views from his house by planting a row of trees and sent Milne a $3,500 bill for a fence they'd built around his garden. Milne refused to pay. Over the years, Milne has pushed back. He flew a Mexican flag at his house for most of 2016, after Trump vowed to build a wall on the southern American border and make Mexico pay for it. Milne, a health and safety consultant in the energy industry, has hosted scores of journalists and TV crews at his home, where he has patiently explained the pros and cons − mostly cons, in his view, notwithstanding his own personal stake in the matter − of Trump's development for the local area. Milne said that because of his public feud with Trump, he's a little worried a freelance MAGA supporter could target him or his home. He has asked police to provide protection for him and his wife at his home while Trump is in the area. He also said he won't be flying any flags this time, apart from the Saltire, Scotland's national flag. "I don't have a big enough flagpole. I would need one from Mexico, Canada, Palestine. I would need Greenland, Denmark − you name it," he said, running through some of the places toward which Trump has adopted what critics view as aggressive and adversarial policies. Dunes of great natural importance Martin Ford was the local Aberdeen government official who originally oversaw Trump's planning application to build the Balmedie resort in 2006. He was part of a planning committee that rejected it over environmental concerns because the course would be built between sand dunes that were designated what the UK calls a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to the way they shift over time. The Scottish government swiftly overturned that ruling on the grounds that Trump's investment in the area would bring a much-needed economic boost. Neil Hobday, who was the project director for Trump's course in Balmedie, last year told the BBC he was "hoodwinked" by Trump over his claim that he would spend more than a billion dollars on it. Hobday said he felt "ashamed that I fell for it and Scotland fell for it. We all fell for it." The dunes lost their special status in 2020, according to Nature Scot, the agency that oversees such designations. It concluded that their special features had been "partially destroyed" by Trump's resort. Trump International disputes that finding, saying the issue became "highly politicized." For years, Trump also fought to block the installation of a wind farm off his resort's coast. He lost that fight. The first one was built in 2018. There are now 11 turbines. Ford has since retired but stands by his belief that allowing approval for the Trump resort was a mistake. "I feel cheated out of a very important natural habitat, which we said we would protect and we haven't," he said. "Trump came here and made a lot of promises that haven't materialized. In return, he was allowed to effectively destroy a nature site of great conservation value. It's not the proper behavior of a decent person." Forbes, the former quarry worker and fisherman, said he viewed Trump in similar terms. He said that Trump "will never ever get his hands on his farm." He said that wasn't just idle talk. He said he's put his land in a trust that specified that when he dies, it can't be sold for at least 125 years.
