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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Civil Rights Groups Sue CA To Force Improvements to Medi-Cal

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Thursday, July 13, 2017   

LOS ANGELES -- Advocates filed a class action civil rights complaint against the state of California on Wednesday alleging that low reimbursement rates have led to a shortage of doctors who take Medi-Cal - a problem that disproportionately affects low income communities of color.

Lawyers for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center filed the suit in Alameda County Superior Court. Attorney Darin Ranahan said access to health care has become a civil rights issue because a majority of the 13.5 million Californians on Medi-Cal are Latino.

"When a government entity disinvests from a program as it comes to treat more and more people of color, that's illegal race discrimination - and there's precedent for that,” Ranahan said.

The suit said doctors are quitting Medi-Cal in droves because California only reimburses them about half of what Medicare pays. That puts the state 48th in the nation for reimbursement rates to health providers.

Ranahan said the state is not meeting its legal requirement to have at least one primary care physician for every 2,000 Medi-Cal participants, and that leads to drastically reduced access compared with patients with Medicare or employer-sponsored insurance.

"They're constantly denied. They need services,” he said. "Calling up doctor's offices, even the ones that are listed in the booklets for their Medi-Cal plans, just say, 'Sorry, we don't take Medi-Cal. We're not taking any more Medi-Cal patients, etc.' "

Advocates are hoping the judge will order the state to come up with a plan to lure more doctors back to Medi-Cal. The state is expected to file a response to the suit within the next few months.


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