By TOM MURPHY (AP Health Writer)

The Biden administration is pushing to prevent medical debt from being considered in most decisions made over whether someone qualifies to rent an apartment, buy a car or take on a mortgage.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said Tuesday it is planning a rule that would remove medical bills from credit reports and prevent lenders from making decisions based on medical information.

The proposed rule also would prevent lenders from repossessing medical devices like wheelchairs if people cannot repay a loan.

“No one should be denied access to economic opportunity simply because they experienced a medical emergency,” Vice President Kamala Harris said during a conference call laying out the planned rule.

The administration announced plans for the rule in September, and a senior administration official said they expect to finalize it early next year.

The CFPB has said that medical debt can be a poor predictor of whether someone is likely to repay a loan. Those expenses often are not planned like a car or home purchase, and patients may have little control over the progress of a serious illness.

CFPB Director Rohit Chopra also noted Tuesday that research shows billing errors frequently appear on credit reports. He said the rule would prevent debt collectors “from using the credit report as a cudgel” to force people to pay bills they may not owe.

The three national credit reporting agencies — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — said last year that they were removing medical collections debt under $500 from U.S. consumer credit reports.

But the CFPB said Tuesday that even with that change, 15 million people still have $49 billion in outstanding medical bills in collections appearing in the credit reporting system.

The CFPB will take comments or feedback on its proposed rule until August 12.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

With sunshine and warm days ahead, it’s time to put away winter beers and reach for lighter, thirst-quenching, summer beers. Pair that other summertime favorite — ice cream — with your next beer, and you can cool yourself down even more effectively and more deliciously.

While beer and ice cream is not a terribly intuitive combination, the resulting beer float can be delicious — if you choose the ingredients with care. It’s not quite as simple as just mixing and matching a pint of your favorite ice cream with a pint of your favorite beer. That way lies madness.

First, consider the root beer float. The first root beer float was made on Aug. 19, 1893 at the Cripple Creek Brewing Co. in Colorado, so given its brewery origin, it’s not a stretch to substitute beer. Just take away the root and a beer float can be every bit as delicious. The key is the right pairing.

My favorite floats start with vanilla ice cream, and while any vanilla will work, vanilla bean or French vanilla ice cream work best. Then pour your beer over it, just like you would a root beer float, and add a straw and spoon.

But which beer?

Generally, mass-produced light lagers and hop-forward IPAs don’t lend themselves well to enjoying with ice cream. But a rich, nutty porter is divine, and a stout works well, too, though you’ll want a stout that’s not too strong (so no Imperial or Russian stouts). A porter that’s nicely malty with hints of nuttiness really pairs beautifully with the vanilla.

If you do go with a heartier stout, substituting cherry ice cream or even cherry-amaretto ice cream for the vanilla is an inspired move. You can even garnish it with a cherry on top. I find that the best kinds of stout for pairing with ice cream are milk stouts, oatmeal stouts or, in some cases, coffee stouts.

Chocolate ice cream can work well with stouts, too, especially a nitro stout because the lack of carbon dioxide means the cream in the dessert holds up better in the float. Other good flavors to try with stout include coffee ice cream, cookies and cream, chocolate mint or raspberry ice cream or sherbet.

Several breweries now make a peanut butter stout beer — a nice marriage of the chocolate notes of the stout and peanut butter. Unsurprisingly, chocolate or vanilla ice cream work quite well with that. And one specific porter worth pointing out is brewed by Hawaii’s Maui Brewing. It’s called Coconut Hiwa Porter, and it’s especially good with coconut ice cream, though it works well with vanilla, too.

Other pairings that work well include pistachio ice cream with a wheat beer, and hefeweizen with strawberry ice cream. The latter should be an authentic German-style Hefe, which has notes of bananas and cloves from the yeast which match the fruity strawberry flavors really well.

Another excellent pairing is a Belgian-style wit (or witbier or white) or tripel paired with orange sherbet. The wit is brewed with orange peels which really helps bring out the orange flavor. Really, any beer with strong fruit notes or that was brewed with fruit will work nicely with a complementary fruit-flavored ice cream. A summer shandy — which is a mixture of beer and lemonade to begin with — will also work with orange sherbet or a limoncello gelato.

A few more esoteric pairings to try are Baltic porter with Rocky Road, a barleywine with butter pecan ice cream (just ignore what I said earlier about stronger beers), most saisons and chocolate fudge ice cream, or an amber lager and salted caramel ice cream. While brown ales are harder to find these days, hazelnut gelato will pair nicely with one. And a Belgian-style dubbel, which is typically brewed by Trappist monks, and cinnamon ice cream offer divine inspiration.

With the sun beating down on you this summer, it’s the perfect opportunity to discover a heavenly combination.

Contact Jay R. Brooks at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com. 

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A St. Paul woman has been sentenced to five years of probation for holding four workers hostage inside a Speedway store where she used to work.

Armed with a handgun, Kanisha Deon Wiggins went into the Speedway at Johnson Parkway and East Seventh Street on the city’s East Side around 3 p.m. March 4, 2022, and during an ensuing standoff with police demanded to speak with her father, who she falsely claimed is in federal prison, according to the charges.

Kanisha Deon Wiggins (Courtesy of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office)

If not, Wiggins said, she would shoot hostages, according to the criminal complaint charging her with four counts of felony kidnapping for ransom, reward or as a shield. At one point, she fired off one shot; no one was injured.

Wiggins, 33, reached a plea deal with Ramsey County prosecutors this March. Judge Leonardo Castro followed terms of the deal at last week’s sentencing, giving her probation and no additional jail time beyond the 149 days she had already served after her arrest. Two of the four charges were dismissed.

Wiggins, who did not address the court, was also ordered to pay $5,630 restitution and continue with and complete mental health programming.

According to the complaint, officers were called to the store after a man reported that his girlfriend works there and that she had texted him and said she is being held at gunpoint by a woman. Officers arrived and saw Wiggins inside acting agitated, pacing back and forth and gesturing with the gun at her side.

Officers attempted to negotiate with Wiggins over the phone and a public address system. She demanded to speak to her father who was in federal prison, which officers later learned was not true.

“She stated that she was going to send a hostage out to get her (Wiggins’) phone out of her car and if the hostage did not return, she was going to shoot the other hostages,” charges say.

A store employee ran from the store and toward officers, who brought her to safety. A short time later, officers heard a gunshot.

They forced their way into the locked store by shooting and prying out a panel of glass on the door, and brought the three other hostages outside. Wiggins was found in a storage room, and officers found a handgun that had a 9mm round in the chamber.

A man told police that when the other worker ran to police instead of returning with Wiggins’ phone, Wiggins became frustrated and shot a round from the gun but not at any person. He said Wiggins ordered him to lie on the ground as if he had been hit by the bullet. He complied.

Another worker said Wiggins, who is a former employee, walked into the store and asked to hug her. Wiggins said she needed help, so they went to the back office. She then pulled out the gun and ordered her to tell customers they had to leave.

After her arrest, Wiggins asked for a lawyer and did not participate in an interview.

An investigator spoke to Wiggins’ mother who said her daughter had been acting strangely since she returned from Tennessee in December, but never had been diagnosed with a mental illness. When the investigator asked about Wiggins’ father, her mother said that he was “sitting right next to me,” the complaint says.

Wiggins does not have a prior criminal record, beyond minor driving and parking offenses, court records show.

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