If your mail-order prescription landed in a pile of snow on your doorstep last week, you may want to proceed with caution. Pharmacists warn that extreme temperatures — cold or hot — can change the chemical makeup of medicine, often making it less effective. But medicine coming through the mail in overheated UPS trucks or […]
State Government
Posted inState Government
Private school, charters, home schooling and open enrollment: Missouri bills to watch in 2025
Some Missouri lawmakers want to give families more options beyond their traditional local public schools.
Posted inState Government
State line competition complicates economic development for the Kansas City metro
The Kansas City region is a major contributor to the economies of Missouri and Kansas despite border competition that has fueled massive government giveaways. Will efforts to finance stadiums for the Chiefs and Royals undermine a fragile truce?
Posted inEducation
Scholarships, degrees and hazing: Missouri higher education bills to watch in 2025
Lawmakers have proposed changes to scholarships, in-state tuition and transfer credits, but they face a long road before potentially becoming law.
Posted inState Government
One reason Kansas City has lousy public transit: state line
Recently, Richard Jarrold hopped on a bus to get from his office in the east Crossroads to an auto shop in Overland Park. The trip took nearly two hours, four times longer than driving a car. He had to wait for buses at 18th Street and Troost Avenue, at Grand Boulevard and 18th, and once […]
Posted inState Government
How Kansas City is both defined, and held back, by the state line
The Kansas-Missouri border splits Kansas City and divides the metro region more evenly, and sometimes problematically, than any American metro region cut in two by a state line.
Posted inLabor
Voter-approved minimum wage and sick leave measure under fire in courts and the Capitol
A voter-mandated pay hike for Missouri’s minimum wage workers hasn’t kicked in yet — and conservative lawmakers and business groups are looking to the General Assembly and the courts to block the raise. State legislators have filed three bills to restrict the provisions of Proposition A, which ordered a boost to the minimum wage and […]
Posted inHealth
Even after voters, and now a judge, backed abortion rights, access in Missouri will remain difficult
Voters passed Amendment 3 in November to guarantee abortion rights in the Missouri Constitution. That kicked in Dec. 5. But that voter action followed decades of work by the General Assembly to regulate abortion into oblivion. So now state courts must reconcile those myriad regulations attacking abortion with the fresh constitutional amendment that promises access […]
Posted inState Government
Abortion, insulin prices and period products: Here are the Missouri health bills to watch in 2025
Missouri lawmakers will return to Jefferson City in January ready to launch on dozens of health-related bills, including an effort to chip away at abortion rights approved last month by voters, limit how recipients can use government food assistance cards and eliminate the state sales tax on food. Legislation already filed for consideration for 2025 […]
Posted inHealth
Missouri ended its cannabis prohibition. Now it’s looking at the public health consequences
Since Missouri legalized marijuana in 2018, Dr. Bob Batterson has noticed a change in attitudes. The Children’s Mercy Hospital psychiatrist more often hears from parents wondering if cannabis could help their child’s anxiety, autism or OCD. “I tell them there are no studies,” said Batterson, the medical associate director of the hospital’s Division of Developmental […]