MIKE STOBBE, AP Medical Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — The government is reporting that three babies have been born in the U.S. with birth defects caused by the Zika virus.

Birth defects from Zika were also seen in three other pregnancies that ended.

Thursday’s report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is the first accounting of pregnancy outcomes in the U.S. that involve an infection with mosquito-borne virus.

The CDC says 234 pregnant women in the United States — residents and visitors — have been diagnosed with Zika. Most of the pregnancies are ongoing.

All the cases are connected to travel to areas with Zika outbreaks, mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean. There has been no spread by mosquitoes of the Zika virus in the U.S.

TOPEKA – A Kansas man was sentenced Wednesday to three years in federal prison for robbing a gas station, according to acting U.S. Attorney Tom Beall.

Darrian Michael Stewart, 22, Topeka, Kan., pleaded guilty to one count of bank robbery. In his plea, he admitted that on June 20, 2014, he robbed a BP convenience store at 1401 S.W. Huntoon Avenue in Topeka. He entered the store about 8:23 p.m. before approaching the clerk at the counter with what appeared to be a black handgun and demanding money. He fled the store on foot. Later he was identified from surveillance video and arrested.

Beall commended the Topeka Police Department, the FBI and Assistant U.S. Attorney Jared Maag for their work on the case.

SHAWNEE COUNTY – A Kansas woman was injured in an accident just after 1p.m. on Thursday in Shawnee County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2002 Ford Explorer driven by Mariela V. Clarke, 38, Topeka, was eastbound on U.S. 24.

The driver took the exit ramp for southbound U.S. 75, and lost control of the vehicle. It left the roadway and overturned.

Clarke was transported to Stormont Vail.

She was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — A Kansas man is charged with felony child endangerment in connection with a small octopus found wedged in the throat of his girlfriend’s toddler in April.

The Wichita Eagle reports Sedgwick County prosecutors charged 36-year-old Matthew Gallagher on Thursday.

The criminal complaint alleges that Gallagher “unlawfully and recklessly” caused or allowed the 2-year-old boy “to be placed in a situation in which the child’s life, body or health” is at risk.

Gallagher made an initial court appearance Thursday with his attorney, whose name was not immediately available. Gallagher was later freed on bond.

Police have said the boy’s mother told investigators she returned home from work April 5 and found Gallagher performing CPR on her son. The boy was later released from the hospital.

PLATTE CITY, Mo. (AP) — Platte County commissioners are demanding that the county’s treasurer personally repay more than $20,000 lost after he fell victim to an email scam.  The scam also fooled the Barton County Kansas treasurer.

The three commissioners signed a letter Tuesday also demanding Treasurer Rob Willard pay more than $1,900 in attorney fees and gave him a week to come up with the money.

The Kansas City Star reports Willard received an email last month that he thought was from presiding commissioner Ron Schieber instructing him to send $48,000 to a Florida bank to pay for a tax consultant.

But Schieber didn’t make the request. Instead, Willard was spoofed as part of an internet scam that has victimized several other counties in Missouri and Kansas.

Wells Fargo has returned about $28,000 to the county’s general fund.

On June 2, the Barton County Sheriff’s Office reported County Treasurer Kevin Wondra received a check for $34,360.70 from Suntrust Bank of Georgia after $48,600 was erroneously transferred from the Treasurer’s Office in an email scam

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The Latest on the Kansas Legislature’s debate over school funding (all times local):

5:05 p.m.

Five school districts and nine chambers of commerce in Johnson County have endorsed a plan for increasing state aid to Kansas’ public schools by $50 million for 2016-17.

Superintendents and chamber of commerce representatives had a news conference Thursday in Overland Park as two legislative committees wrapped up a joint meeting on school funding issues in Topeka.

The state Supreme Court declared last month that the state’s school funding system remains unfair to poor school districts. It warned that schools might not be able to reopen after June 30 without further changes.

Gov. Sam Brownback has called a special legislative session for June 23. He has embraced a $38 million fix.

But Johnson County districts would see a net loss of $4.5 million in aid under that plan.

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4:20 p.m.

Education groups in Kansas oppose proposals to amend the state constitution to prevent the courts from threatening to close schools in funding lawsuits.

Representatives of the Kansas Association of School Boards, Game on for Kansas Schools and Kansas Families for Education testified Thursday against proposed amendments during a joint hearing of the state House and Senate Judiciary committees.

They said such amendments would prevent the courts from enforcing orders to improve education funding.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Jeff King outlined two proposals in response to a recent state Supreme Court order declaring that the state’s education funding system remains unfair to poor school districts. The court is threatening to keep schools closed after June 30 if lawmakers don’t make further changes.

Republican lawmakers have decried the threat.

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2:55 p.m.

The Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee’s chairman has outlined two proposals for keeping the state Supreme Court from threatening to close public schools in education funding lawsuits in the future.

The proposals presented Thursday by Republican Sen. Jeff King of Independence are responses to a recent Supreme Court order that says the state’s education funding system remains unfair to poor school districts. The court warned that schools might not reopen after June 30 unless lawmakers make further changes.

One of the proposed amendments would include a provision to prohibit legislators from closing schools in response to a court order.

If lawmakers approved a proposal, it would go to voters. King presumed it wouldn’t be until the November election but some lawmakers wondered whether it could be the August primary.

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2:35 p.m.

A Kansas legislative researcher says the only known instance in which a court has shut down a state’s schools as part of an education funding lawsuit occurred in New Jersey in the 1970s.

Researcher Lauren Douglass discussed school finance lawsuits in other states during a joint meeting Thursday of the Kansas House and Senate Judiciary committees. Gov. Sam Brownback has called a special legislative session for June 23 to respond to a recent state Supreme Court order on education funding.

The court said the state’s education funding system remains unfair to poor school districts and warned that schools won’t be able to reopen after June 30 unless legislators make further changes.

Douglass said New Jersey’s schools were closed for eight days after a ruling from its Supreme Court in 1975.

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1:05 p.m.

A Democratic lawmaker says the Kansas Legislature should increase state aid to public schools by $38 million to help poor districts but also soften the blow for other districts that might have some of their funds redistributed.

Rep. Jim Ward of Wichita said Thursday that even if lawmakers redistribute aid among school districts to satisfy a recent state Supreme Court order, there should be ways to address concerns in Johnson County.

The county is the state’s most populous, and its three largest districts would lose nearly $4.8 million in aid for the 2016-17 school year under the plan Ward embraced. Republican Gov. Sam Brownback embraced the same plan.

The Supreme Court ruled last month that the state’s school funding system remains unfair to poor school districts.

11:45 a.m.

The president and CEO of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce is telling legislators that they’re not required to increase spending to satisfy the state Supreme Court’s latest ruling on education funding.

Chamber CEO Mike O’Neal testified Thursday that legislators could direct the State Department of Education to shift unused funds among school districts to cover additional aid for poor school districts.

The House and Senate judiciary committees were meeting to discuss potential responses to the Supreme Court’s order last month that the education funding system be changed to help poor districts. Gov. Sam Brownback has called a special session for June 23.

Brownback has embraced a plan to boost state aid to schools by $38 million for the 2016-17 school year. Groups representing school boards and administrators also endorsed the idea.

10:15 a.m.

Kansas legislators are reviewing past state Supreme Court decisions on school funding as they start considering how to respond to a ruling last month directing them to make additional changes to help poor school districts.

The House and Senate Judiciary committees convened a joint meeting Thursday to discuss both potential education funding fixes and proposals to amend the state constitution to curb the court’s power in handling school finance issues in the future.

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback called a special session of the GOP-dominated Legislature for June 23.

The court’s most recent ruling said public schools might remain closed after June 30 if legislators do not rewrite school finance laws by then.

Some Republicans want to amend the state constitution to prevent the courts from threatening to close schools in the future.

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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas legislators plan to discuss a short-term education funding fix to satisfy the state Supreme Court while also debating longer-term proposals for curbing the court’s power to force school finance changes.

The House and Senate Judiciary committees were convening Thursday for joint hearings on both issues.

Republican Gov. Sam Brownback called a special session of the GOP-dominated Legislature for June 23. Lawmakers will address a recent Supreme Court decision that education funding remains unfair to poor school districts.

The court said public schools might remain closed after June 30 if legislators do not rewrite school finance laws by then.

Some Republicans want to amend the state constitution to prevent the courts from threatening to close schools in the future, but such a measure wouldn’t go before voters until November.

MAIZE, Kan. (AP) — The former technology director for the Maize school system is among those accused in an ongoing lawsuit of defrauding the central Kansas district of more than $1 million.

The Wichita Eagle reports that the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed the civil case in 2014, although it wasn’t unsealed until this year. It stemmed from a federal investigation into a fraud, money laundering and kickback scheme that spanned more than five years and involved several vendors that were paid more than $4 million for technology-related services.

The investigation focused on former district employee Ramon Mosate, who committed suicide last year. The case seeks the forfeiture of a lavish northwest Wichita home previously owned by Mosate, about $80,000 in cash from a safe deposit box and about $5,400 in his checking account.

By Andy Marso

State officials continue to whittle away at a backlog of Medicaid applications that developed over the past year. But as they do so, people with expertise in Medicaid eligibility say they’re seeing an increase in incorrect denials. The backlog began a year ago when the state moved to a new computer system for determining Medicaid eligibility. The Kansas Eligibility Enforcement System, or KEES, had been long delayed as state workers and a private contractor, Accenture, tried to work out bugs.

Problems remained when the program went live in July 2015. Then, in January, the state moved responsibility for application processing to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, including some previously processed by the Kansas Department for Children and Families.

That created a bottleneck just as the annual Affordable Care Act open enrollment period funneled thousands of potential applicants to Medicaid, which in Kansas is a privatized managed care program called KanCare.

The result: At one point in February, more than 18,000 new KanCare applications awaited processing, including about 7,750 past the 45-day federal limit.

Another 18,000 annual reviews for existing KanCare clients were in the queue, and more than 10,000 of those had been pending 45 days or more. By that point the state had taken steps to address the backlog, and the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services requested twice-monthly updates on progress.

KDHE took on extra workers and shifted some existing employees to help with processing.

DCF employees who specialized in applications for the elderly and disabled were called to help at the KanCare Clearinghouse — a processing center overseen by KDHE and partially staffed by a private contractor.

The state also set up an appeals process for nursing homes to seek partial reimbursement for residents waiting months for KanCare coverage.

The backlog hit nursing homes particularly hard as they provided thousands — and in some cases millions — of dollars in uncompensated care while waiting for residents to gain Medicaid approval.

KDHE officials have focused resources on the new applications and decreed that no one awaiting an annual review would lose their coverage while the backlog persists. The number of unprocessed reviews ballooned to almost 30,000 by May 8.

But by then the number of new pending applications was down to 3,480, with 2,081 of them out 45 days or more.

“We have been working very hard on getting the situation stabilized, and we have made progress,” said Angela de Rocha, a state agency spokeswoman.

Incorrect denials

It’s not just the older applications pending more than 45 days that have been reduced. The state also has been clearing new applications more quickly. The number pending for 15 days or less dropped from 3,000 in mid-March to about 600 by May 8.

Two Kansans with experience navigating the Medicaid eligibility system said that in the state’s rush to make an eligibility

determination, errors are popping up that concern them.

Molly Wood, a Lawrence attorney who specializes in elder law, outlined three active cases in which she says clients’ applications were mistakenly denied, plus another two that were approved but with an incorrect patient liability amount for services rendered.

Wood said the three cases had denials for failure to:

• Provide information that actually was provided.
• Produce a 20-year-old assets document that was overturned by the Office of Administrative Hearings.
• Provide more life insurance information within 45 days of the original application, when the request for further information arrived more than 45 days after the application.

“I honestly don’t know how anyone penetrates the KanCare system,” said Wood, who has 25 years of experience in elder law.

Regina Falcetto, an Emporia resident, worked for DCF from 1979 until 2012, when it was known as the Department for Social and Rehabilitation Services.

She helped Kansans in the Emporia area apply for a range of assistance programs, including Medicaid, and supervised training of new workers. In the last few months she has been helping her mother enroll her father in Medicaid.

They encountered the same problems Wood described. Falcetto said after they applied through the online KEES portal, the application was denied. They were told it was because certain documents were missing, but she said she could go back into the online portal and see that the documents had been submitted with the application.

So Falcetto called the Clearinghouse and, after waiting on hold for almost an hour, reached a worker who acknowledged the application had not been processed correctly. The worker told her not to appeal because one of her colleagues at the Clearinghouse was taking a second look at it.

But Falcetto said she appealed anyway because she knew that if there wasn’t an appeal on file, her father might not get backdated coverage for services provided while the application was pending.

She worries that other Kansans who are less experienced with the Medicaid system would not know to do that, or even how to handle the initial denial. “I can stick on this and I can stick with an appeal, and I’m going to get it done,” Falcetto said.

“But what are other people doing? … How many of them are just being denied and saying, ‘OK, I guess I have to do something else?’”

Rachel Monger, director of government affairs for LeadingAge Kansas, said residents of the nursing homes that her group represents report similar problems. “More families are receiving denials as their applications are being processed,” Monger said via email. “The denials will commonly stem from a lack of documentation. Documentation the family member has sent in three different times.”

State works on remaining problems 

Like Wood, Monger said she’s hearing of “wildly inaccurate” patient liability determinations.

She said her organization has spoken with KDHE’s deputy director of Medicaid, Christiane Swartz, about the problems, but it’s unclear whether they stem from computer system errors or mistakes by state workers who lack sufficient training.

Falcetto said she’s heard from former co-workers that the KEES system was “not ready,” but she believes a lack of training and experience also is a factor, given the complexity of the Medicaid system.

“They’re hiring people who are unclassified at a lower rate of pay, and they are the ones doing this work,” Falcetto said. “They have very few actual (experienced) eligibility workers.”

De Rocha said sometimes KanCare applicants don’t supply the right documents, but she said some of the problems that Wood and others described can be attributed to KEES while others are “human errors.”

“We are well aware that there are still problems with the eligibility determination process,” de Rocha said. “And we deeply regret the frustration and delay some consumers are experiencing.” De Rocha said the state is working to make the application process easier by expanding access to paper applications at Aging and Disability Resource Centers, local health departments and DCF service centers after hearing complaints about difficulties for Kansans without internet access.

She said application rates tend to fluctuate from month to month, and eligibility denial rates are difficult to compare because the ACA requires everyone who wants to purchase insurance through the online marketplace to first get a Medicaid denial letter.

De Rocha provided information showing that total Medicaid enrollment in Kansas grew to 434,000 by the end of April, exceeding the pre-KEES monthly averages. It had dipped to about 403,000 at the height of the backlog.

The state projected about $10 million in budget savings due to lagging Medicaid enrollment during that time.

Andy Marso is a reporter for KHI News Service in Topeka, a partner in the Heartland Health Monitor team. You can reach him on Twitter @andymarso

HARVEY COUNTY – A Kansas teen was injured in an accident just after 6:30a.m. on Thursday in Harvey County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 1999 BMW passenger car driven by Alexandra Faye Lewis, 18, Peabody, was southbound on Interstate 135 near Lincoln Boulevard.

The vehicle left the roadway, struck a guardrail, veered right across the southbound lanes and struck a bridge railing.

Lewis was transported to Wesley Medical Center.

She was properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.