KANSAS CITY, KAN. – A California man who was convicted on federal methamphetamine trafficking charges in Kansas was sentenced Friday to 146 months in federal prison according to U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said.

Tino Soriano, 33, Coachella, Calif., pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine. In his plea, he admitted that on March 22, 2012, he was one of the occupants of a car that fled from a house in the 800 block of South 72nd Street in Kansas City, Kan., after investigators made a controlled delivery of a package containing almost two pounds of methamphetamine. Investigators had seized the package at a FedEx facility in Kansas City after a drug dog alerted to the contents. Soriano and two co-defendants left the package behind because they realized they were under surveillance.

Officers pursued Soriano’s vehicle, eventually finding it abandoned at a residence in the 16000 block of 182nd Street in Tonganoxie, Kan. A birth certificate and other documents belonging to Soriano were found in the car. In addition, investigators learned that on March 21, 2012, Soriano was present with co-defendant Leslie Kingsley during a drug deal at a strip club off K-7 Highway in Bonner Springs, Kan. Kingsley fronted 14 grams of meth to co-defendant Kristy Sherley so she could provide samples to other buyers.

By DAN MARGOLIES

Sylvia Matthews Burwell succeeded former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in June 2014. Before that she was Director of the Office of Management and Budget. She has also served as president of the Walmart Foundation and of the Global Development Program of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In a telephone interview earlier this week, she spoke with Heartland Health Monitor (HHM) about the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid expansion and a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that challenges a key element of the Affordable Care Act. Here are excerpts from that conversation:

HHM: Despite all the resistance to what’s commonly known as Obamacare, particularly in red states like Missouri and Kansas, it appears that enrollment numbers are actually rising. So I’d like to know how it looks from your perspective, especially in our neck of the woods.

Burwell: In Missouri we have 219,000 consumers that have selected a plan or were automatically reenrolled and in Kansas that number is 83,000. And as we look at each of those states, in Missouri 88 percent of the folks that are enrolled received premium support and the average amount of support is $284 per month. And so in Kansas, that number is 80 percent and it’s $214 per month. And so what we are seeing is people coming in using the marketplace and using the subsidies and assistance to make sure that they can get affordable care.

HHM: That brings up this question: There’s this case, of course, that bears your name in front of the Supreme Court, King v. Burwell. And as you well know, this case has the potential to undo a major part of Obamacare – the subsidies that we’re talking about, which more than 6 million people in more than 30 states have received, that have enabled them, as you say, to buy health insurance. What happens if the Supreme Court rules against you and rolls back those subsidies?

Burwell: So I think you probably know we believe Congress passed legislation to provide these subsidies and Congress wouldn’t pass legislation that said that people in New York should get these kinds of benefits and people in Kansas and Missouri shouldn’t. And so we believe we’re in a strong position with regard to what the law says, and we see these subsidies as making a difference in terms of how the system works, so that affordable health care is purchased. We know that in 2013 to 2014 we saw a drop in the uninsured adults by 10 million people in our country. And making health care affordable is a very important part of how that’s happening.

HHM: But if the court rules against you, what alternative plans are in place to address the fact that many people are going to lose their subsidies and may not be able to afford health insurance?

Burwell: In states like Missouri and Kansas in the individual market what you’d see is premiums go up. And finally there’s the indirect effect, which is that the uninsured number would go up. When uninsured goes up, indigent care or unpaid for care goes up, and that burden usually gets spread across all folks, including those in the employer-based market in terms of the premiums that they pay.

HHM: As you know, Missouri and Kansas are among the states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. But it appears that HHS is willing to negotiate with states that want to expand Medicaid in their own way. Kansas is one of those states. For example, they’re talking about imposing fees on hospitals to pay for the state’s share of the costs of expansion and also talking about imposing work requirements on Kansans who would become eligible. How flexible is HHS willing to be in allowing states like Kansas to impose their own expansion requirements?

Burwell: We believe there are certain fundamentals that are part of that. Beyond that, we’re open to having conversations about what will work in individual states. As you probably know, we recently completed conversations with Gov. Pence in Indiana – had the opportunity to spend time with him – and they are already implementing the expansion in Indiana. … One of the first things I did as secretary is go to the National Governors Association and make sure the governors knew I’m open to these conversations. We know different states have different needs. There are some fundamentals that are important to making health insurance work. Those we need. Beyond that, in terms of how people think about incentives and programs, are things that we can have discussions about.

HHM: So have you been in contact with anybody in the state of Kansas about their plans to expand Medicaid?

Burwell: Conversations have not started with the state. But every day I look forward to continuing and starting new conversations involved in a lot across the country and hope that in Kansas that that can happen.

Dan Margolies is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

NEW YORK (AP) — General Motors is recalling more than 81,000 vehicles because of problems that can cause power steering to fail.

The recall covers certain Chevrolet Malibu, Malibu Maxx and Pontiac G6 vehicles with power steering from the 2006 and 2007 model years.

GM says a message will be displayed on the Driver Information Center and a chime will sound if power steering is lost. It says drivers can still maintain control, but that requires greater effort at low speeds.

Nearly all the recalled vehicles are in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Dealers will replace a sensor assembly in the power steering. GM says the problem has caused one crash but no injuries or deaths.

The recall is an expansion of a recall from last year involving about 1.3 million vehicles.

By Dave Ranney

Last year, more than 25,000 women and children spent time in one of the 29 domestic violence shelters in Kansas. A few men did as well.

“These are just the ones we know about,” said Joyce Grover, executive director of the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence.

Between 2009 and 2013, law enforcement officials in Kansas investigated nearly 96,000 reports of domestic violence, resulting in 68,000 arrests.

The best way to bring these numbers down, Grover said, is to “stop it before it starts.” And the best way to do that, she said, is to get people talking about changing the long-unchallenged “beliefs, attitudes and behaviors” that condone — or don’t do enough to condemn — violent relationships.

“The big picture we’re all aiming for here is for a world without intimate partner violence,” Grover said Tuesday at the start of a two-day conference in Topeka titled “Reweaving Our Social Fabric: Engaging to Prevent Sexual and Domestic Violence.”

Don McPherson, a 1987 consensus All-American quarterback at Syracuse University who later played in the National Football League and Canadian Football League, gave one of the conference’s keynote addresses.

Now an advocate and educator, McPherson, too, encouraged those in the audience to have public discussions aimed at dissecting the root causes of domestic violence.

“We don’t raise boys to be men,” he said. “We raise them not to be women, and in that process we raise them in a very narrow way in how they see themselves, how they come to understand who they are and how they come to see women as ‘less than.’ That’s an attitude that not only leads to violence against women but also to our collective silence about it.”

Similarly, McPherson said the worst thing a coach can say to a boy is “You throw like a girl” or “You run like a girl.” He also said that adults should stop using the adage, “Boys will be boys.”

Concerning the NFL’s response to Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice’s assault of Janay Palmer, his then-girlfriend and now his wife, McPherson said, “I hope that at some point, as a culture and as a society and as a nation, we get to ask the question: Why do we idolize and lionize men in professional sport who are part of a culture of abuse? And at some point, we have to ask why the NFL continues to give us this product when we know these are not necessarily good people.”

He questioned the media’s stories on why Palmer remained with Rice after he knocked her unconscious in a hotel elevator. “Why didn’t anyone ask why Ray Rice remained in that relationship?” McPherson said. “Think about it. What kind of man would want to stay with someone he’s spit on, someone he assaulted on a public elevator? What does that say about him?”

He welcomed President Obama’s appearance in a video shown Sunday during the Grammy Awards that condemned domestic violence. But the nation’s music industry, he said, has done little to lessen its promotion of “misogamy, sexism and violence against women.”

Laura Patzner, who runs the Family Crisis Center, a 10-county domestic violence shelter based in Great Bend, welcomed McPherson and Grover’s calls encouraging public conversations about domestic violence.

“The biggest thing that people don’t understand, I think, is how pervasive it is,” Patzner said. “This isn’t just about abusive marriages or how many people get arrested or how many people we see (at the shelter). It’s cultural, it’s bullying, it’s about how we get along with others.”

Patzner said her 16-bed shelter in almost always full.

“I tell people we just did an expansion – we bought two blow-up mattresses,” she said. “When we need them, which is a lot of the time, we use them.”

Grover encouraged any civic group or organization interested in hosting a conversation on domestic violence issues to contact the shelter in their region.

Dave Ranney is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.