Latest From California Healthline:
California Healthline Original Stories
Patient-Induced Trauma: Hospitals Learn To Defuse Violence
Health care workers face a greater threat of workplace violence than workers in most other industries. Hospitals are installing security cameras and panic buttons, arming security guards with stun guns and teaching their employees how to handle potentially violent situations. (Heidi de Marco, )
Good morning! A town hall meeting held by Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) in August 2017 is reverberating in the Democratic presidential race to this day. Read more about that below, but first here are your top California health stories for the day.
Nearly 200,000 Californians Could Lose Food Stamp Benefits As Trump Administration Tightens Work Requirements For Program: Under current law, able-bodied adults without dependents working fewer than 80 hours a month or in certain training or volunteering activities qualify for three months of food stamps every three years. States and counties can waive those three-month limits if, for example, unemployment rates are high. Currently, all but six California counties—Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, Santa Clara and San Mateo—have received waivers through August 31, 2020. Fresno has waived the limits for the past two decades. The new rule will make it significantly harder for counties to drop the requirement. “It will require almost every county to enforce the harsh time limit on providing nutrition assistance for adults who are working less than 20 hours each week, no matter how hard they are looking for a job, have irregular schedules, or are employed but unable to document their hours,” said Jessica Bartholow, policy advocate at the Western Center on Law and Poverty.
The rule is expected to affect a wide-range of people across the state. Rochelle McAdam runs a food bank in Los Angeles through Urban Partners Los Angeles that primarily serves families and the elderly. McAdam said she's seen an increase in the demand for food, with hundreds of people lining up every Saturday. Fresno Department of Social Services Deputy Director Linda Du’Chene said the rule will harm the Central Valley’s farmworkers. “We are a rural agricultural county, and we are very concerned about our clients who are working seasonal jobs. For example, it’s raining (Wednesday), so our farmworkers who may need those hours to qualify are not working,” Du’Chene said.
In addition, the requirement will put more strain on county workers who will have to accommodate the increased administration work that’s involved with the rule.
Read more from Manuela Tobias of CalMatters, Juliet Linderman of The Associated Press, and Anabel Munoz of ABC.
Kaiser Permanente Mental Health Workers Announce New Date For Strike Delayed By CEO’s Death: The union representing roughly 4,000 Kaiser Permanente mental health clinicians announced Wednesday that they have rescheduled their five-day strike for the week of December 16, after postponing it in November after the death of the company’s chief executive officer, Bernard Tyson. The National Union of Healthcare Workers said the strike would affect patients at more than 100 Kaiser facilities in California from Sacramento to San Diego. The clinicians say they want Kaiser to shorten wait times for patients trying to schedule return visits for behavioral health treatment and reduce caseloads for therapists. Read more from Cathie Anderson of the Sacramento Bee.
Below, check out the full round-up of California Healthline original stories, state coverage and the best of the rest of the national news for the day.
More News From Across The State
Sacramento Bee:
California Hires Homeless Official Forced Out By Donald Trump
Amid an escalating fight between California and the federal government over homelessness, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Wednesday announced he’s hiring a former Trump administration official as a homelessness adviser and expediting funding to build shelters. The announcement comes as Newsom’s office accuses the federal government of withholding data on homelessness populations that the state uses to allocate aid money. (Bollag, 12/4)
San Francisco Chronicle:
Oakland Proposes Crackdown On Homeless Campers In Parks And On Sidewalks
Oakland officials want to stop homeless people from camping overnight in parks and plazas and on sidewalks, proposing a pilot program that would bring the city in line with its neighbors but is drawing rebukes from homeless advocates. The city has a law that prevents overnight camping in parks, but police and public works crews do not enforce it, because of staffing limitations and concerns over potential litigation. Homelessness has spiked in Oakland in the past two years, however, and officials are reviewing city policies to confront the crisis. (Ravani, 12/4)
San Francisco Chronicle:
‘We Don’t Want To Be Outside’: Homeless Say Few Beds Offered During Tenderloin Sweep
San Francisco cleared a Civic Center alley of tents Wednesday, one of its largest homeless sweeps of the year, causing dozens of people to fold up their makeshift homes, throw out their belongings and scatter elsewhere. City officials say outreach workers spent the past six weeks visiting Willow Street and tried connecting as many people as possible to services. But advocates and more than a dozen people living on the street said they were offered scant warning, and little-to-no resources — like a Navigation Center bed — before they were told to move shortly after the sun rose Wednesday. (Thadani, 12/4)
Sacramento Bee:
Cabins For Homeless Women, Children Proposed For Sacramento CA
A long-vacant dirt lot across from Garden Valley Elementary School in the Northgate neighborhood of north Sacramento could soon become the site of 49 cabins sheltering homeless women and children. Councilman Jeff Harris wants the City Council to consider the project as one potential site for shelters as Sacramento continues to search for ways to address its increasing homeless population. (Clift, 12/5)
Sacramento Bee:
Women’s Empowerment Asks Book Of Dreams Readers For Toys, Diapers And Other Items For Their Child Development Center
Breanna Rae White was 12 when she first experienced being uprooted. Her mother packed her up one day and left San Jose after escaping a violent relationship, and mom and daughter eventually ended up in the St. John’s shelter in Sacramento. It was during that time that White’s mother discovered Women’s Empowerment, a then-brand new nonprofit organization aimed at helping abused, addicted and homeless women find employment and improve their lives. (Monahan, 12/5)
Los Angeles Times:
Police Shootings Of Black People Linked To Health Problems For Infants
Pregnant black women who lived near the site of such officer-involved fatalities had their babies sooner than mothers who weren’t exposed to such incidents during their pregnancies, researchers found. What’s more, those infants had significantly lower birth weights — a risk factor for future health problems.The findings, published this week in the journal Science Advances, point to the ways police killings of unarmed black Americans affect the community at large, even over multiple generations. (Khan, 12/5)
Los Angeles Times:
Fearing CTE, A Former USC Star's Family Donates His Brain
The brains arrive at all hours in white cardboard boxes stamped “RUSH!” Inside each package is an inch-and-a-half-thick foam liner and a red bag protecting an ordinary white plastic bucket. When a courier service delivered Kevin Ellison’s brain to the Bedford VA Medical Center near Boston just after 2 p.m. on Jan. 22, Dr. Victor Alvarez performed the routine he has done so many times that he’s stopped counting. (Fenno, 12/3)
Capital Public Radio:
Placer County To Inspect Carbon Monoxide Alarms In Short-Term Rentals After Close Call In Tahoe
Fire crews in North Tahoe say a vacationing family avoided a major tragedy over Thanksgiving weekend as their short-term rental filled with poisonous carbon monoxide gas. All 13 people survived the incident, including actress Anna Faris, despite the absence of a single carbon monoxide detector. (White, 12/4)
KQED:
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning From Portable Generators Proves Predictable – And Deadly
At certain levels, just five minutes of carbon monoxide exposure is enough to be fatal. The colorless, odorless gas is produced wherever fuel is burned, and can build to deadly levels especially quickly in enclosed spaces. Portable generators, whose engines each emit as much carbon monoxide as approximately 450 cars, are especially common culprits. (Treisman, 12/4)
Ventura County Star:
Oxnard City Council Regulates Pot Dispensaries, Bans Flavored Tobacco
The Oxnard City Council said yes to marijuana dispensaries on Tuesday but no to flavored tobacco. ...In a separate vote, council decided to ban the sales of flavored tobacco, a move aimed at the increasing number of young people who vape and the illnesses and deaths that have followed. Council voted unanimously in support of the ban. It is not a ban of e-cigarette sales but rather the sale of tobacco and vaping products that are flavored with mint, candy, fruit or other tastes. (Leung, 12/4)
The Wall Street Journal:
Kaiser, Optum Back Addiction-Recovery Startup Groups
As the U.S. opioid addiction epidemic grinds on, startups offering treatment services are gaining popularity with health-care providers and investors. One company making headway in the crisis is Groups, which recently raised $27 million in new financing from major health organizations. Groups, which is based near Boston and officially called Recover Together Inc., said its backers were impressed by its above-average patient success rates. (Mack, 12/4)
The Washington Post:
Joe Biden Releases Tax Plan, Rejecting Elizabeth Warren’s Wealth Tax
Former vice president Joe Biden released a plan Wednesday to raise $3.2 trillion in taxes over 10 years to pay for his domestic spending proposals, including on health care and climate, as he seeks to cast himself as the fiscal moderate in the Democratic presidential primary amid pressure from his liberal rivals. (Stein, 12/4)
Politico:
Medicare For All: The Most Consequential Moment Of The 2020 Primary
Kamala Harris was hosting a town hall in her hometown of Oakland, Calif., two years ago when she made an announcement that set off a mad scramble in the U.S. Senate. “Here, I’ll break some news,” Harris told hundreds of people packed into the sanctuary at Beebe Memorial Church on Aug. 30. “I intend to co-sponsor the ‘Medicaid for All’ bill because it’s just the right thing to do,” she said, flubbing the name of the proposal. (Thompson, Otterbein and Ollstein, 12/5)
The New York Times:
What Is Voters’ Highest Priority? There’s A Way To Find Out
Republicans in Congress have tried to discredit the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry by arguing that it distracts Congress from its real duties. One Republican-aligned group recently released a poll of 1,600 voters in four congressional districts that suggested Americans “prioritize issues over impeachment.” But when we look at data on revealed priorities from people all over the country, we see something different. In reality, there are few things facing the nation that anyone, regardless of party, believes are a higher priority right now. Most people would give up their preferred outcomes on health care, the environment or taxes if it meant getting what they want on impeachment. (Vavreck, Sides and Tausanovitch, 12/5)
The New York Times:
Hospitals Sue Trump To Keep Negotiated Prices Secret
The nation’s hospital groups sued the Trump administration on Wednesday over a new federal rule that would require them to disclose the discounted prices they give insurers for all sorts of procedures. The hospitals, including the American Hospital Association, argued in a lawsuit filed in United States District Court in Washington that the new rule “is unlawful, several times over.” They argued that the administration exceeded its legal authority in issuing the rule last month as part of its efforts to make the health care system much more transparent to patients. (Abelson, 12/4)
The New York Times:
Barr Says Communities That Protest The Police Risk Losing Protection
Attorney General William P. Barr warned that communities and critics of policing must display more deference or risk losing protection, a stark admonition that underscored the Trump administration’s support for law enforcement amid an ongoing national conversation about police brutality against minorities. “They have to start showing, more than they do, the respect and support that law enforcement deserves,” Mr. Barr said on Tuesday afternoon in comments at an awards ceremony for policing. “And if communities don’t give that support and respect, they may find themselves without the police protection they need.” (Benner, 12/4)
Stat:
Over 100 Small Biotech CEOs Blast Pelosi's Drug Pricing Bill
Nearly 150 CEOs of emerging biotech companies are sending a unified, stark message to Capitol Hill: Abandon the Democrats’ signature drug pricing policy. In a new letter, signed by buzzy biotech startups like Global Blood Therapeutics (GBT) and Alnylam Pharmaceuticals (ALNY), the executives lob a blistering critique of the signature drug pricing bill unveiled this fall by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The legislation would allow Medicare to negotiate the price of certain high cost drugs and wage huge fines for companies that don’t comply. (Florko, 12/5)
The Associated Press:
Once-A-Month Birth Control Pill? Experiment Works In Animals
Birth control pills work great if women remember to take them every day but missing doses can mean a surprise pregnancy. Now scientists have figured out how to pack a month’s supply into one capsule. The trick: A tiny star-shaped gadget that unfolds in the stomach and gradually releases the drug. (12/4)
Stat:
Problems With Medicines May Be Vastly Underreported To The FDA
It’s no secret that the many side effects caused by medicines do not get reported to the Food and Drug Administration, but a new report suggests the magnitude of underreporting is far greater than imagined. After examining side effects that were conveyed to the regulator for five widely used medicines — two different types of arthritis treatments, an antipsychotic, and a blood thinner — just 1% of an estimated 276,000 serious adverse events had been reported in 2017. (Silverman, 12/4)