LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — Assembly Speaker Steve Yeager, D-Clark County, on Thursday introduced a bill that would cap insulin prices at $35 per month for patients with private health insurance in Nevada.
WATCH | What a cap on insulin prices would mean for Nevadans
Yeager bill would cap insulin for everyone in Nevada
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Yeager’s bill — Assembly Bill 555 — comes with less than a month to go in the 2025 legislative session, which is scheduled to adjourn on June 2.
The bill was referred to the Assembly’s Commerce & Labor Committee for hearings and a preliminary vote.
Legislative leaders have a small number of emergency bills they can use to introduce legislation late in the session, irrespective of deadlines for regular lawmaker and committee bills. AB 555 is one of Yeager’s emergency measures.
“With the passage of this legislation, we are placing a hard cap on the cost of insulin for private insurance, no more than $35 for a 30-day supply,” Yeager said at a morning news conference. “This is a promise we’re making to tens of thousands of Nevadans who live with diabetes and have struggled for far too long with outrageous, unpredictable prices.”
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Yeager recounted stories from around the state, including parents skipping insulin doses so their children won’t miss theirs, or senior citizens splitting vials to stretch their supply for a whole month.
“This is not, and should not, be acceptable,” Yeager said. “And under Assembly Bill 555, it won’t be tolerated.”
According to the American Diabetes Association, 26 states and the District of Columbia already cap insulin prices. That includes Utah, Colorado and New Mexico.
Insulin price caps for people on Medicaid have been implemented at the national level, initially on a trial basis. President Joe Biden made them permanent when he signed the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, limiting costs to $35 per month.
But people on private insurance can pay varying rates, which prompted Yeager to introduce his bill. He said at his news conference that he looked forward to getting the bill through the Legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who is set to introduce his own health-care measure soon.
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Barb Hartzel, whose daughter has Type 1 diabetes, spoke at the news conference as well, discussing how critical insulin is in her daughter’s care.
“Insulin is not optional for my daughter,” Hartzel said. “It is not a luxury. It is not negotiable.”
Despite that, she said families are cutting doses, delaying picking up refills or having to choose between groceries and their medicine. “What price tag would you put on your child’s life?” she asked.
Back in 2017, Nevada lawmakers approved a bill that requires pharmaceutical companies to list the wholesale cost of prescription drugs that treat diabetes. But that bill didn’t cap prices the way Yeager’s measure seeks to do.
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LAS VEGAS — The Vegas Golden Knights have promoted Ryan Craig to head coach, replacing John Tortorella, the team announced Wednesday.
Craig has been the organization’s American Hockey League coach, leading the Henderson Silver Knights each of the past three seasons. He joined the Golden Knights’ staff for their inaugural season in 2017-18 and was an assistant for six seasons, including their 2023 Stanley Cup title.
The 44-year-old Craig replaces John Tortorella after it was announced Tuesday he would not be returning to the team after being hired with eight games left in the regular season, replacing the fired Bruce Cassidy. Tortorella went 7-0-1 in the regular season before the run to the Stanley Cup Final where Vegas lost to Carolina, 4-2, after taking a 2-1 lead.
Craig was selected in the eighth round by the Tampa Bay Lightning in the 2002 NHL draft. He had 63 points (32 goals, 31 assists) in 198 regular-season games for the Lightning, Pittsburgh Penguins and Columbus Blue Jackets and no points in 11 Stanley Cup Playoff games.
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“We thank ‘Torts’ for the guidance he provided our team since joining the organization in March,” VGK general manager Kelly McCrimmon said. “When the decision was made to bring Torts to Vegas, we needed an immediate impact to help us at a pivotal point in the season. Torts’ experience and leadership proved to be the boost that we were looking for, helping guide us to the Stanley Cup Final. We are grateful for Torts’ passion, sincerity, and commitment to our organization, and we wish him and his family the best.”
Nearly 69,981 NV Energy customers were without power Tuesday evening across Reno, parts of the North Valleys, the northwest area and as far south as Washoe Valley as crews investigated a widespread outage.
The outage also includes previously reported impacts in Sparks, according to NV Energy outage information.
The cause of the outages is listed as unknown and under investigation.
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It is not immediately known whether the outage is related to fire-related deactivation in parts of east Sparks or if it is a separate incident.
Additional information was not immediately available.
ORIGINAL STORY – JUNE 16:
More than 8,100 NV Energy customers are without power in parts of Sparks as a vegetation fire in east Sparks continues to burn.
NV Energy listed the cause of the outage as unknown and under investigation, affecting ZIP codes 89431, 89434 and 89436.
NV Energy has deactivated power in the area due to the fire, according to Sparks Fire Department in an online post.
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The fire is burning in the area of Geno Martini Parkway and Garda Court and has prompted evacuation orders for the Vecchio Drive area.
An evacuation shelter has been set up at the Sparks Library on 12th Street for residents impacted by the fire.
The situation remains active and is a developing story. Additional information was not immediately available.
I filmed on a burn on Harmony Ridge, above Nevada City yesterday with a newish private company called ‘[First Rain Land Stewardship](https://www.firstrainlandstewardship.com/)’. They run a thinning crew out of Nevada City and the owner is a CARX California State-Certified Burn Boss. I wanted to cover this burn because with all of the media attention on Cal Fire’s Putah Creek escaped burn last week, and after months of doomer ‘*2026 will be the worst fire season ever*’ reporting, it seems like many people are really anxious about the upcoming season, but that we aren’t really there, yet. Also, I feel like we need to push into burning WHENEVER THE CONDITIONS ARE APPROPRIATE, regardless of calendar dates.
We broadcast burned about 13 acres of mixed conifer that had been thinned last summer by First Rain. They had burned some of the piles last winter, but about 2/3 of the unit still had piles in it. Some of the piles were pretty large, but all of them burned down to the heavies within 10-15 minutes. The woods on the other sides of the property lines were scary-thick with heavy cedar reprod and needlecast manzanita (see photo 2, below)!
We had about 15 people which included the First Rain crew, 4 people from the new Nevada City Fuels Crew (paid out of a local bond measure), one person from the Nevada County RCD, and a couple guys from North San Juan VFD (?). Many of the people on the burn had previous firefighting and logging experience.
It got up into the 90s after lunch, but RHs stayed above 30% and we remained in prescription. There was not much wind or lift, so we got shaded a bit by our own smoke for most of the day. We had roads around about 1/2 of the burn, and a hoselay around the rest. We had 4 or 5 Type VI engines and a couple water trailers. All of the un-roaded lines were well burned-in by the time it heated up in the afternoon.
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The duff was dry all the way down to mineral soil, but there was quite a bit of greenery in the forbs and grasses. The terrain was complex, due to lots of old mining disturbance, so they backed fire off all the little ridges between the old gullies, and got really good consumption on the duff and litter. There were a lot of piles in the gullies, and the heat from these may have killed some of the residual trees in the tighter gullies. It was freaking hot in there, and the heat lasted for a long time. It was a reminder that in our heaviest thickets, in places we can’t operate mechanically, removing fuels is really difficult – with the volume of overstocking we are facing in many places, pile burning can result in high mortality, even if you burn in the winter.
One benefit of having all the heat from the piles was that we got good indrafts to the center of the units, and there wasn’t much smoke for the holding crews.
Yesterday was the first day of the burn permit suspension in NEU. This project was done under a land management exemption, signed by the Unit Duty Officer.
