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Faced with increasing public anger over surprise medical bills, Texas doctors and health insurance companies are turning to a new tactic to try to help shape conversations over potential future regulations: blaming each other. In a series of news releases and statements this week, two of the most powerful groups in the state medical community ended what had amounted to a public truce over so-called “balance billing.” (Rosenthal, 10/11)

Last year, tea party and conservative groups helped squash Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s plans to expand Medicaid, derailing the governor’s top legislative priority for the foreseeable future. Now they want Virginia to drop a decades-old requirement that Virginia hospitals get approval before proceeding with major construction projects or equipment purchases. Supporters say the law, known as certificate of public need, hold down health care costs by avoiding unnecessary duplication of services. But conservative groups say the law is to limit competition to the advantage of large hospitals and limits customer choice. (Suderman, 10/9)

Colorado voters could be asked to make a choice on next year's ballot: Would you trust an elected state board to govern your medical needs more than private insurers and Obamacare? Initiative 20 would unwind Connect for Health Colorado, the insurance exchange that complies with the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare. Instead of buying private insurance, Coloradans would pay another 10 percent in premium taxes to cover their medical care. (Bunch, 10/12)

As they consider ways to improve university revenues, campus administrators point to the life-saving hepatitis B vaccine, the nicotine patch that helps smokers quit their habit and the tasty Camarosa strawberry. Those patented innovations, all pioneered at the University of California, have earned the school system, and the faculty who developed them, more than $500 million. (Gordon, 10/10)

Advocates of assisted suicide are significantly expanding their efforts to build support in Maryland for broader end-of-life options, hopeful that a recent victory in California will provide new momentum for legislation that failed to get out of committee in Annapolis this year. Across the state, organizers are meeting with faith-based communities; inviting small groups to watch the documentary “How to Die in Oregon,” about that state’s assisted-suicide law; and serving coffee and doughnuts at “house parties” that seek support for assisted-suicide proposals and offer information about health-care options when people are severely injured or become terminally ill. (Wiggins, 10/10)

Now that California has legalized physician-assisted suicide, advocacy groups are planning statewide education campaigns so doctors know what to do when patients ask for lethal medication to end their lives. One of the first stops for doctors new to the practice is a doctor-to-doctor toll-free helpline. It’s staffed by physicians from states where the practice is legal, who have experience writing prescriptions for lethal medication. (Dembosky, 10/12)

The Texas Supreme Court agreed Friday morning to review a state tax on small cigarette manufacturers, known collectively as "Small Tobacco." The case centers on House Bill 3536, passed two years ago, which imposes a 55-cent fee on each pack of cigarettes produced by Small Tobacco. State Rep. John Otto, who wrote the bill, said at the time his goal was to “level the playing field” — tax smaller cigarette manufacturers in the same way Big Tobacco is taxed. (Rudner, 10/9)

A statistical summary published every year by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment shows a glimmer of progress last year on a long-standing health disparity between black and white Kansans: the death rate for babies in their first year of life. For more than 20 years, black babies have died at a much higher rate than white babies in Kansas. Some years, the difference has been three-fold. But the 2014 Summary of Vital Statistics from KDHE shows a drop of almost one-third in the black infant mortality rate, from 15.3 per 1,000 live births in 2013 down to 10.3 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2014. (Thompson, 10/9)

An Ohio judge on Friday formally ended a court effort to force chemotherapy on an Amish girl whose parents had defied a hospital over her treatment for leukemia, according to a ruling released on Friday. Medina County Probate and Juvenile Judge Kevin Dunn terminated the medical guardianship for the girl, ending a legal battle over the limits on parents' rights to make medical decisions. A court-appointed medical guardian had already given up on forcing the girl to resume chemotherapy after her family left the country for a while in 2013 to pursue alternative treatments that the family said improved the girl's condition. (Palmer, 10/9)

Heroin users are 20-something professionals. They’re somebody’s grandma. A community-based network of concerned officials and citizens in Franklin, the county seat of Macon County in the rural southwestern corner of the state, is aiming to get people to the treatment they need. On Set.17, Full Circle Recovery Center was awarded a federal Health Resources and Services Administration Rural Opioid Overdose Reversal grant to support this network, called the Macon Overdose Prevention Coalition. (Sisk, 10/9)

People living with HIV/AIDS and insured through Cigna, one of the nation’s largest health insurers, will no longer be required to buy their antiretroviral medications by mail order under a legal settlement reached in U.S. District Court in Fort Lauderdale and announced Friday. Cigna agreed to change its policy after a nonprofit patient advocacy group, Consumer Watchdog, filed suit in April claiming that the health insurer’s mail-order-only policy risked the health and privacy of its patients. Lack of choice, the lawsuit claimed, equated to discrimination. (Chang, 10/9)

The University of Miami is searching for a new leader for South Florida’s only organ bank after the executive director stepped down over differences with university administrators — days before federal regulators conducted an unannounced inspection. Michael Goldstein, a surgeon hired in February 2014 to lead the kidney transplant program at the Miami Transplant Institute and to serve as director of the Life Alliance Organ Recovery Agency, left the university Sept. 25 “to pursue other opportunities,” according to a UM spokesman. (Chang, 10/9)

A Miami doctor is facing two federal fraud conspiracy charges for his alleged role in a $20 million Medicare fraud scheme run by a health care company. Dr. Henry Lora is scheduled to enter a plea Oct. 21 to the charges, which carry a combined 25-year maximum prison sentence. Lora is free on $600,000 bail. His attorney didn't immediately respond to an email seeking comment. (10/11)