The legislature is working to prevent another Anderson Guest House tragedy.

What started out as a tougher elder abuse law took on an entirely new identify after the group home in Anderson burned last November and left 12 people dead.

Now the proposal will require all group homes to have sophisticated smoke, fire, and heat alarms within two years, and modern sprinkler systems within six years. Sponsor Michael Gibbons thinks a majority of Missouri’s group homes lack modern sprnkler systems.

Senator Bill Stouffer of Napton fears the sprinkler requiremenst will drive operating costs so high that some homes will close. He says many of the facilities are old and the sprinkler installation costs will be "tremendous." He cites one 60-bed facility that has received a bid of almost $650,000 for a sprinkler system.

One of his fellow senator has suggested it’s too bad, but sprinkler systems should be a cost of doing business.

Gibbons has built in a program to help group homes finance the sprinkler systems. He says he wants places to be safe but he also wants places that can afford to stay open.

Gibbons’ plan has the state loaning the group homes half of the costs of installing the systems.

Stouffer has failed to get the sprinkler requirement removed.

download Bob Priddy’s story (:60 mp;3)

Medicaid fraud legislation will be back in the regular legislative session in January after lawmakers could not reach enough of a compromise to trigger a special legislative session this week. But it won’t be the same. It will be tougher. The House has refused to accept the strong medicaid fraud bill backed by the senate and the governor…and the governor refused to call a session to pass the bill providing Medical Assistance to Workers with Disabilities–which the House wants–because of that. Senator Chris Koster of Harrisonville, the sponsor of the fraud bill, says that’s okay because he wants to make the fraud provisions tougher next year. And he wants to make it a pocketbook issue for providers. He says he’s willing to work with House members to raise state reimbursements to medicaid service providers. But he says he will not allow them to get “another dollar” until the state enactes his tougher anti-medicaid-fraud legislation. House critics of Koster’s bill this year argued the provisions against Medicaid fraud would drive doctors out of Missouri. Koster doesn’t buy that claim one bit. He says 20 states have similar fraud programs to the one he proposed this year, and doctors have not left those states. So next year, he has a new deal—if doctors and other medicaid providers want more money from the state, they’d better be ready to accept even tougher fraud standards. Introduction of bills for the 2007 legislative session begins December 1