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A New Orleans-based system of hospitals and clinics serving Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama is working with a New York nonprofit to wipe out $366 million in medical debt for about 193,000 needy patients. The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate reported Wednesday that the deal involving Ochsner Health was arranged by Undue Medical Debt, a donor-funded organization that negotiates with hospitals, doctors’ offices and ambulance services to purchase and erase the outstanding medical debt of those least able to afford it. (8/22)

Florida KidCare, a childhood insurance option for some parents who lost coverage, is failing to offset the coverage gap left by the Medicaid unwinding. (Paul, 8/22)

Transgender Texans can no longer change the sex listed on their driver’s licenses to match their gender identity, according to a state policy rolled out this week. Advocacy groups say the new rule further harms a vulnerable community already targeted by anti-trans efforts in the state and around the country. (Kaur, 8/22)

Smokers living in apartments, condos and townhomes in Carlsbad will now have to think twice about lighting up inside their homes. The beach city Tuesday became the first in San Diego County to expressly ban smoking and vaping of cannabis and nicotine products inside all local multifamily residential buildings. (Fry, 8/22)

The New Jersey state attorney general is changing the state's use-of-force policy after two fatal police shootings of people experiencing mental health crises. Attorney General Matthew Platkin says this is the first statewide policy of its kind and will require all police departments in New Jersey to coordinate with mental health professionals when they're responding to a call for a barricaded person, a situation he says overwhelmingly involves people experiencing an emotional crisis and is the most likely call to end in an injury. (Bauman, 8/22)

Missouri Gov. Mike Parson on Thursday accused Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft of thwarting an executive order to ban various forms of the cannabis compound THC over “hurt feelings” because Parson endorsed Ashcroft’s GOP rival in the recent gubernatorial primary Ashcroft lost. Ashcroft did not sign-off on Parson’s August emergency executive order banning the sale of unregulated THC substances. Recreational and medical marijuana are both legal in Missouri, but Parson’s executive order was aimed at particular THC compounds that aren’t regulated, including Delta-8. (Ballentine, 8/22)

�鶹Ů�� Health News: Disability Rights Activist Pushes Government To Let Him Participate In Society

Garret Frey refuses to be sidelined. Frey has been paralyzed from the neck down for more than 37 of his 42 years. He has spent decades rejecting the government’s excuses when he and others with disabilities are denied the support they need to live in their own homes and to participate in society. The Iowan won a landmark case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999, after his school district refused to pay for the care he needed to continue attending high school classes in Cedar Rapids. (Leys, 8/23)