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Illinois will begin paying for services to help young children with developmental disabilities and to assist seniors in their homes despite not having a budget in place and warnings from lawmakers that the state is spending billions more than it's taking in. Illinois Comptroller Leslie Munger said Wednesday her office determined the early intervention services, provided to children up to age 3, should have been paid for under a previously issued consent decree that requires some social services be funded. In a separate action, a federal judge ruled a program that aims to help seniors avoid costly nursing home care is covered by a court order requiring state payment. (Burnett, 9/17)

A federal judge has ruled a program providing in-home services to seniors is covered by Medicaid and should be funded even though there's no Illinois budget because of a political stalemate. Stephanie Altman is with the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law. She says U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow issued the ruling in Chicago on Wednesday. Altman says the Community Care Program serves 89,000 seniors. It provides homemaking assistance which allows them to avoid costly nursing home care. (9/16)

A report on aging in Los Angeles County, the nation’s largest county and one of its most diverse, shows wide disparities in life expectancy among different ethnic groups and neighborhoods. Overall, the life expectancy for Los Angeles County residents was about 82 years in 2011, up from nearly 76 in 1991, according to the report by University of Southern California’s Roybal Institute on Aging. Much of that can be attributed to drops in coronary heart disease, strokes and lung cancer, the report noted. (Gorman, 9/16)

Jon Stewart, the recently retired host of “The Daily Show,” exhorted Congress on Wednesday to permanently extend a law providing treatment and compensation to rescue workers who were injured or sickened by the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The bill, which is set to start expiring next month, has long been a favored cause of the comedian, whose shows in 2010 criticizing the law’s Republican opponents and showcasing emergency medical workers with health problems helped prompt its passage. (Mueller, 9/16)

Truman Medical Centers said it is closing its Hospital Hill behavioral health emergency department in Kansas City, Mo., effective immediately and current patients will be transferred to the hospital’s inpatient facility or to another psychiatric facility. Truman CEO Charlie Shields said in a telephone interview that the move came after state and federal regulators made it clear the department needed “to look and operate as if it’s an emergency department in a regular hospital, and that’s fairly challenging for us.” (Margolies, 9/16)

Two rural hospitals in crisis got some help from state legislators Wednesday, as amendments to assist them were added to a bill to encourage diabetes screening for children. House Bill 20, now renamed the Rural Access to Care Act, makes tweaks to existing state law to help residents of Yadkin and of Beaufort counties, both of which have had hospitals close in the past year. (Hoban, 9/17)

In a case the Los Angeles district attorney’s office is calling one of the largest insurance scams in the state, an orthopedic surgeon is accused of deceiving patients into having surgery at the hands of an unqualified assistant and undergoing procedures they didn’t need. (Jewett, 9/16)

As a gay man, the Boston attorney thought he was doing the responsible thing when he asked his doctor to prescribe Truvada, a drug hailed as a way to halt the spread of AIDS. But when he tried to get long-term care insurance, Mutual of Omaha turned him down, saying it does not offer coverage to anyone who takes the drug. Now, the man is planning to sue the insurer, alleging he was discriminated against because he is gay. He filed a complaint Wednesday with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, the first step in a lawsuit. (Lavoie, 9/16)

Lawyers for Garden City resident Shona Banda have prepared a lawsuit against Gov. Sam Brownback and the state agency that has custody of her child, claiming she has a constitutional right to use cannabis to treat her Crohn’s disease. Banda self-published a book and posted videos online in which she says cannabis is the only treatment able to calm her condition. The national medical marijuana movement has rallied around her since March, when Garden City police came to her home and confiscated her cannabis after her 11-year-old son spoke up about her use of it at a school anti-drug presentation. (Marso, 9/16)