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Texas lawmakers are considering a bill that would keep a person's gun ownership status from being listed in their medical records, a move health providers worry would be an unnecessary government intrusion that harms their consultations with patients. The bill would make Texas at least the second state to enact similar restrictions, following a 2011 Florida law on hold because of legal challenges. (Warren, 4/2)

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration for the first time laid out its plan to save $3.4 billion in employee health-care costs over the next four years. The strategy addresses a long-standing fiscal challenge and sheds light on how the city hopes to help offset raises negotiated over the past year with municipal unions. The planned cost-cutting includes the city paying less than previously projected for employee health insurance, newly negotiated rates with insurers and greater incentives for preventative care. (Gay, 4/1)

A health insurer in Florida last week agreed to lower the price of some HIV medications, moving them from a specialty tier to a generic medication tier. The change will reduce copayments from roughly $1,000 a month for some medications to anywhere from $5 to $100, according to advocates. (Gorn, 4/1)

Donald Spicer slowed his police car to a crawl as he pointed out “shooting galleries” — paint-chipped houses with broken windows and rotting wood, where addicts inject liquid painkillers and lose all sense of time. Used needles often lie in plain sight, in the cracked streets, in the garbage-filled gutters, on patchy lawns. “This is a common problem,” the police chief said. “This isn’t anything new to us.” Spicer now finds his rural hometown at the core of the state’s worst-ever outbreak of HIV, one so grave that Gov. Mike Pence declared a health emergency last week. Pence also authorized a short-term needle exchange to fight the virus’ spread, an exception to Indiana’s conservative anti-drug policy that bars programs to trade dirty needles for clean ones. (Parvini, 4/1)

During the past decade, Vermont has spent $675 million setting up Medicaid managed-care programs but has done such a spotty job monitoring them that they can’t even be audited. That’s the upshot from a letter state Auditor of Accounts Douglas Hoffer sent to lawmakers last week. It followed up on an internal report in January by the Agency of Human Services detailing gaps in answers to this question: Have the state and federal governments — and taxpayers — been getting their two-thirds of a billion dollars’ worth? (Gram, 3/31)

State regulatory boards may want to change their ways to avoid antitrust liability following a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision against a North Carolina dental board, Federal Trade Commissioner Maureen Ohlhausen said in a speech Tuesday. Ohlhausen, however, said she doesn't think such changes will be overly burdensome. (Schencker, 4/1)

A Somali immigrant mother’s relentless campaign to expand care for poor children with autism has achieved a major triumph, as Minnesota becomes one of the first states in the nation to subsidize a broad range of intensive therapies for the developmental disorder. (Serres, 4/1)

Besides living with a sense of panic and staying up at night worrying, Marina Derman has been in advocacy mode lately – testifying, writing emails, trying to convince lawmakers to salvage the program she says saved her family from crisis. She’s one of many people making appeals as legislators try to come up with a new two-year budget. In her case, it’s for the state’s voluntary services program for young people with both mental health diagnoses and autism or an intellectual disability, many of whom receive intensive services to allow them to live with their families. (Levin Becker and Phaneuf, 4/2)

The Montana Legislature has passed a measure urging school employees to complete suicide awareness and prevention training. The proposal recommends that public school employees partake in two hours of suicide prevention training every five years. (4/1)

A Las Vegas psychiatric hospital is now reaccredited after an embarrassing patient busing scandal in 2013. The Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Services agency announced Tuesday that the Rawson Neal Psychiatric Hospital won accreditation from the national Joint Commission. In 2013, the hospital faced allegations of "patient dumping" after James F. Brown was put on a bus alone and sent on a 15-hour trip to Sacramento, Calif. Brown knew no one in the area and suffers from schizophrenia and depression. (4/1)

A conference committee agreed Wednesday to adopt a budget bill that cuts $378,000 from a grant program that supports safety net clinics throughout the state. (Ranney, 4/1)

A group of 14 attorneys general has asked Congress to launch an investigation of the herbal supplements industry and to consider giving the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stronger oversight of the industry, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced. (4/2)