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Two weeks after suing private insurers for improperly denying costly drugs to patients with hepatitis C infections, Seattle lawyers have expanded the fight to Washington state’s Medicaid provider. A class-action lawsuit filed this week on behalf of two Apple Health clients — and nearly 28,000 others with the liver-damaging disease — seeks to force the Health Care Authority (HCA) to change a policy that limits the spendy drugs to only the sickest patients. (Aleccia, 2/17)

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration is seeking to eliminate legislators’ authority over certain attempts to make changes to Medicaid and other federally funded assistance programs – an authority legislators recently used to block a controversial administration proposal. (Levin Becker, 2/18)