KPCC: Would California's Proposed Tobacco Tax Hike Reduce Smoking? Just Ask New Yorkers 
California currently has one of the lowest cigarette taxes in the country: 87 cents per pack. If voters pass Proposition 56 in November, the tax would go up to $2.87 a pack. Backers of the measure, including the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association, hope to hit people hard enough in the wallet that they quit smoking, or never start. Studies support the goal. For every 10 percent increase in the price of cigarettes, smoking goes down 4 percent, according to the 2014 Surgeon General’s Report. (Dembosky, 9/22)

Meanwhile, California Healthline looks at the murky details of where the money would be spent —

California Healthline: Tobacco Tax Ballot Measure Would Fund Health Care For California’s Poor — But How?
At first blush, the tobacco tax measure on California’s November ballot looks pretty straightforward. Proposition 56 would raise the price of a pack of cigarettes by $2 and tax e-cigarettes for the first time. Proponents say the higher price would prevent kids from smoking and lower health care spending because people won’t suffer as much from tobacco-related illness. What’s not spelled out is how exactly money raised through the measure would be spent. (Bartolone, 9/23)

San Francisco Business Times: Dignity Faces Losses, Liabilities And Growing Competition 
Dignity Health, the Sacramento area’s third-largest private-sector employer, suffered a net loss of $237.8 million in the fiscal year ended June 30. It was its first significant loss in more than a decade. (Robertson, 9/23)

San Francisco Business Times: Executives Steve Nolte, Rob Caione Leave Sutter Health Plus 
Observers are raising questions about the long-term prospects for the start-up HMO. (Robertson, 9/22)

San Francisco Business Times: Growth Spurt For Health Care Clinics 
Health care providers are opening more clinics in the Sacramento area to meet a growing demand resulting from the Affordable Care Act, and to offer urgent care services as a less expensive and more convenient option to hospital emergency rooms or pre-scheduled doctor visits. (Anderson, 9/23)

The Desert Sun: Research Shows Where The Syphilis Problem Is The Worst Among Gay Populous
Syphilis is taking a particularly strong toll on the health of gay and bisexual men, with infection rates especially high in the southern and western United States. Research released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows the national Syphilis infection rate for men who have sex with men is 309 cases per 100,000 people. That's nearly 50 times the rate within the overall population. (Newkirk, 9/22)

In other public health news —

Orange County Register: California Newborns To Be Tested For ALD, Thanks To San Clemente Mom's Persistence 
ALD is a progressive neurological disease found is one of every 20,000 newborn boys, the California Department of Public Health said in a news release. Some boys with ALD will develop a life-threatening form of the disease, which causes adrenal gland dysfunction and is characterized by weight loss, muscle weakness, fatigue and life-threatening complications, the CDPH said. Families notified of ALD can plan ahead to map out a relatively normal life for a baby boy who otherwise might quietly develop a deadly form of ALD between ages 4 and 9. (Swegles, 9/22)

Capital Public Radio: Garage Bands And Pastels Sometimes Are The Key To Mental Health
Van Gogh. Plath. Cobain. Some of the world’s most influential artists have suffered greatly from  mental illness. There is no scientific consensus of a genetic link between creativity and mental illness. But a number of studies show a link between recovery and art and music therapy. (Moffitt, 9/23)

The Associated Press: Study Finds 20M Would Lose Health Coverage Under Trump Plan
A new study that examines some major health care proposals from the presidential candidates finds that Donald Trump would cause about 20 million to lose coverage while Hillary Clinton would provide coverage for an additional 9 million people. The 2016 presidential campaign has brought voters to a crossroads on health care yet again. The U.S. uninsured rate stands at a historically low 8.6 percent, mainly because of President Barack Obama's health care law, which expanded government and private coverage. Yet it's uncertain if the nation's newest social program will survive the election. (Alonso-Zaldivar, 9/23)

In other national health care news —

The Wall Street Journal: House Republicans Warn Against Settling Suits With Insurers Over Health-Care Payments
Congressional Republicans are warning the Obama administration not to settle with insurers that have sued the government over an Affordable Care Act program to compensate them for losses under the law, saying such a move would bypass spending limits set by Congress. Forty-six House Republicans signed a letter sent Thursday to Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell saying they oppose any settlements and could sue the administration to block them. (Armour, 9/22)

The Wall Street Journal: Senate Moves Closer On Budget Bill Despite Divisions
Republicans and Democrats in the Senate have agreed on $1.1 billion in funding to combat the Zika virus as part of a stopgap spending bill needed to keep the government running beyond next Friday, but they remain divided over whether to include assistance for Flint, Mich., as part of that deal. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) introduced legislation Thursday that would keep the government funded through Dec. 9, but Democrats said they weren’t ready to sign on to a bill that included flood relief for certain states but doesn’t address the drinking water crisis in Flint. (Peterson, 9/22)

Stat: Valeant Avoids Double-Digit Price Hikes With 9.9 Percent Increases
In response to intensifying criticism over drug prices, Allergan chief executive Brent Saunders promised not to raise prices by more than single-digit percentage points. So far, no other head of a large drug maker has spoken publicly about this notion or agreed to do the same thing. Yet some companies may adopt this approach quietly — and push the envelope in the process.How so? One way is to raise prices on drugs by 9.9 percent. And this is what Valeant Pharmaceuticals did last week. (Silverman, 9/22)

ProPublica: Doctor Confesses: I Lied To Protect Colleague In Malpractice Suit
Almost two decades ago Dr. Lars Aanning sat on the witness stand in a medical malpractice trial and faced a dilemma. The South Dakota surgeon had been called to vouch for the expertise of one of his partners whose patient had suffered a stroke and permanent disability after an operation. The problem was that Aanning had, in his own mind, questioned his colleague's skill. His partner's patients had suffered injuries related to his procedures. But Aanning understood why his partner's attorney had called him as a witness: Doctors don't squeal on doctors. (Allen, 9/23)

Fresno Bee: Drug Pricing Is Too Complex To Fix With Prop. 61 
It would serve Big Pharma right if Californians passed Proposition 61, capping drug prices by prohibiting state agencies from paying any more for prescription medication than the rock-bottom prices paid by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. The industry certainly has given voters every reason to do it – from jacking up the cost for lifesaving EpiPens by a whopping 500 percent to making the most effective treatments for hepatitis C so expensive that they’re out reach for millions of Americans. (9/19)

Los Angeles Times: Recipe For Ripoffs: Pricing Drugs By Their 'Value' To Sick People
It’s easy to assume that greed is solely to blame for runaway drug prices — and companies like Mylan do nothing to challenge that perception. The reality, however, is more complicated. When [Mylan Chief Executive Healther] Bresch talked about drug prices and access existing “in a balance,” she was referring to what the pharmaceutical industry calls value-based pricing. This is what you get when you price a drug not just commensurate with its research and development, production and marketing, but also reflecting the drug’s importance to patients. And that’s a very slippery concept. (David Lazarus, 9/23)

Sacramento Bee: ‘Right To Try’ Bill Offers False Hope To The Desperately Ill 
The Medical Oncology Association of Southern California and the California Nurses Association oppose Assembly Bill 1668, by Ian Calderon, D-Whittier. We agree that it is in the best interest of terminally ill Californians and their loved ones that the governor veto this bill again. The misleadingly named bill would not give patients a real right to try experimental drugs. Rather, it would give them a “right” to request access to drugs in development at pharmaceutical companies. But there is no obligation for a company to grant a patient’s request. (Allison Bateman-House, Arthur Caplan and Lisa Kearns, 9/22)

Los Angeles Times: Sick: The Biggest Increase In Healthcare Costs In 32 Years
Healthcare is very much in the news, but for all the wrong reasons. On the one hand, we had Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump visiting the “Dr. Oz” show last week to reveal some tidbits about his physical condition (he’s fat). On the other, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton had a bout of pneumonia but declared herself fit as a fiddle (we’ll see). The real story, however, wasn’t that the two oldest presidential candidates in U.S. history are showing their age but that the rest of us are still getting creamed by rising healthcare costs. (David Lazarus, 9/20)

Orange County Register: Where Has $17 Billion In California Mental-Health Funds Gone? 
Back in 2004, California voters passed Proposition 63, formally known as the Mental Health Services Act, imposing a 1 percent tax on seven-figure incomes to be used to develop and expand mental health care services. Not the worst idea, and indeed, in the 12 years since there have been plenty of anecdotes about Prop. 63-funded programs helping Californians overcome mental illness or even heading off cases in people at risk of mental illness. One problem: The anecdotes are just that. Not statistics. Not hard evidence. Just isolated tales. So how do voters know if state and local officials and others in charge of spending the Millionaires’ Tax’s $17 billion in aggregate revenue are using it effectively? We don’t. (9/18)

Los Angeles Times: Stopping Superbugs 
Scientists and public health officials have been warning for decades that overuse of antibiotics would inevitably lead to a rise of bacteria that have adapted to the drugs and developed a resistance to them. This is no longer a distant threat. Old standby antibiotic treatments have lost the fight against some diseases and new strains of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are emerging with terrible frequency. We haven’t yet reached the post-antibiotic era, but we are fast approaching it. (9/20)

San Francisco Chronicle: How Congress Is Failing On Zika
As the fiscal year nears its end on Sept. 30, the next Zika showdown will now be linked to the debate about the 2017 federal budget. This means that the overarching U.S. response to Zika may not be based on the best approach to stop the spread of the disease, but on compromise on other issues like reallocation of leftover Ebola money, politics around Planned Parenthood and, now, size of the federal funding package. (Ana Santos Rutschman, 9/18)

Los Angeles Times: It's Time To Legalize And Regulate Marijuana In California. Yes On Proposition 64.
Six years ago California voters were asked to make recreational marijuana legal under state law and they declined to do so. But the close decision — 46% voted “yes” on Proposition 19 — suggested that the battle was not yet over. At that time, The Times opposed Proposition 19 not because legalization was necessarily a bad idea, but because it was a poorly drafted mess that would have created a regulatory nightmare. In the years since, a lot has changed. (9/16)

Los Angeles Times: What Your Kids Need To Know About Marijuana, Legalized Or Not
"Cannabis Curious?” That’s the billboard my children and I see every day on our after-school drive on Ventura Boulevard. The questions from my kids, who are 11 and 13, have come spilling out: “What is cannabis? What's curious about it? Why does it have different names? What does it look like? Why do people use it?” If you are a parent, no matter how you plan to vote on Proposition 64 — the California initiative that would legalize marijuana for adult use — you need to be prepared to talk about marijuana with your kids. (Elizabeth J. D'Amico, 9/21)