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Melissa Benjamin has labored for 16 years as a home health aide for various employers. What she has never been paid, despite her field of work, is a dollar of health insurance by any of them. For most of those years, she turned to Medicaid to cover her medical costs. At $10 an hour, "I make so little that I can't afford a premium," she said. (Olinger, 4/5)

With Sacramento’s fentanyl-related overdoses at center stage, a state Senate committee unanimously approved the first step in stiffening penalties for major drug traffickers in California who sell large amounts of the potentially lethal painkiller. (Buck, 4/5)

A measure to raise the age to buy tobacco from 18 to 21 in Illinois got initial approval Tuesday, with the lawmaker behind the proposal telling colleagues he wants to make it harder for youth to pick up a lifelong habit. (Moreno, 4/5)

Dr. Karen Kinsell has been the only physician in Clay County for the past 11 years. Kinsell, an internist and graduate of Columbia University’s medical school in New York, earns far less than a typical physician. Vacations simply don’t happen. She stays very busy seeing the residents of Clay County, an impoverished rural area hard against the Alabama line. Patients come from all over southwest Georgia, and even from Alabama. (Naqvi, 4/5)

Less than three miles separate the vacant lots of Miami’s Overtown neighborhood from the manicured hedges of Brickell Key — a short distance with a big difference in life expectancy for children, according to new research published Wednesday. The Miami life expectancy map, created using U.S. Census Bureau population data and Florida death records, found that a child reared in Overtown will live an average of 71 years while one raised in Brickell Key can expect to live about 86 years. (Chang, 4/5)

A new task force seeks to address a growing prenatal care crisis in Bexar County, where almost 40 percent of live births involve women who didn’t receive such care or only got it late in pregnancy. Composed of staff from the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District and Healthy Families Network, a group of 40 local organizations, the task force met for the first time in February and is only at the starting gates of fixing the problem, a health department official told participants at a town hall meeting Tuesday. (Fletcher Stoeltje, 4/5)

Officials with the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare have approved a 15-month contract extension with Optum Idaho, which manages mental-health and substance-abuse treatment for Medicaid recipients. (Kruesi, 4/5)

A North Texas drug-compounding business and its founders have filed a libel lawsuit against The Dallas Morning News, its parent company A.H. Belo Corporation and staff writer Kevin Krause. RXpress Pharmacies and Xpress Compounding, two drug compounders partly owned by Fort Worth pharmacist Lewis Hall and his son Richard Hall, are seeking “$50 million in damages caused by the negligence, gross negligence or intentional conduct” by the newspaper and Krause. (Halkias, 4/5)

Kathy Lynch cried when a jury's verdict was read out loud in court. Porter Superior Judge Mary Harper told the courtroom, "Not guilty," for all 16 counts against Lynch. Several days later, Lynch teared up again reliving the dramatic scene. The owner of Kouts Health Care Clinic was cleared last week of all 16 charges against her accusing her of illegally issuing weight loss drugs to clinic patients. Lynch, a nurse practitioner since 1989, said her clinic has lost 90 percent of its patients since she was indicted. (Davich, 4/5)

The numbers were stunning, even to those who already knew that scores of injured workers were being prescribed potentially dangerous amounts of painkillers. More than 9,300 workers — nearly 20 percent of claimants receiving medication paid for by the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation — had prescriptions sufficient to render them physically dependent on opioids. (Price, 4/6)

Stacy Warden slides the last spoonful of oatmeal and apple sauce into her 7-year-old son's mouth, then returns, frowning, to the paperwork spread across her kitchen table. The documents show Noah, who has cerebral palsy and does not talk or walk, used every penny of his annual disability benefits, capped at $36,400. Except he didn't, according to Warden, who keeps a meticulous accounting of her son's state Medicaid funding. The records from Noah's case manager at Imagine! — one of 20 community-centered boards in Colorado where children and adults with disabilities access tax-funded therapy and care — say Noah used $14,600 in respite care in one year, which Warden knows did not happen. (Brown, 4/5)